Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. You dropped a bomb on me. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Today we're discussing our like or dislike of Final Fantasy X based entirely on a handful of screens and sketches and skant plot information. In other words, welcome to a wholly standard edition of Double Agent.

Thanks for the letter, Mike. At one time this was ostensibly a question and answer column, although by both the will and intention of moderators such as myself, it has degraded into a digital dumping ground for opinionated rants and half-baked notions. It's nice to see purists like yourself trying to fight the status quo with actual questions, but I'm afraid it's Us: 1, You: 0.

See, none of that is currently known, so I can't actually answer any of your questions. Sucker. You just got copped-out on so bad.

I actually feel that RPGs are far more than just the story; I'm getting tired of all these gaming mags and sites deducted points from excellent RPGs for no discernible reason and justifying it by blaming the story. As I've said before, an RPG is more than the sum of its parts, and everything from gameplay to character design is an essential component. No one aspect is so important as to negate every other.

Other than that, though, yeah -- not much is known about the game yet, so we're just being a bunch of big stupidheads in discussing the quality of the game so amazingly prematurely. That's what makes us RPG fans, if experience hasn't shown me wrong.

The body of your letter makes a point to which I have no response, so I'll get straight to the meat and potatoes of the letter: the final half-sentence after your signature.

Hey, if belching at the table is crude, just call me Mister Crass. If making farting noises with your armpit in the middle of a college lecture is tasteless, call me the Anti-tact. And if stealing people's cars and running them through the front wall of a crowded diner at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour is "rude," you can just call me Captain Rude.

You know, that seemed funny when I wrote it. Then I realized the hundreds upon hundreds of legal liabilities such a joke can invoke upon myself, and knew I either had to get rid of the joke or make a disclaimer. Well, I've done even better: I've come up with a new award. Initially I was going to call it the "Nice Going, You Made Drew Say Something Nasty for Which he Could be Held Legally Accountable in the Court of Law Award," but that was lacking a certain ring to it. So instead I'm just going to call it the Disclaimer Award.

Congratulations, Face. You're the lucky, lucky first recipient. Chances are I'll eventually lose my mind altogether and come up with an even more bizarre award, but for now you're getting the most inscrutably odd of the bunch.

Remember, neither Drew Cosner, the Gaming Intelligence Agency (from hereafter "GIA"), or any instution or personage in any way, shape, or form related with the GIA condone, dismiss, or accept the driving of a road or passenger vehicle through any side of a diner or other inhabited structure at high speeds, medium speeds, or even low speeds for that matter.

Yeah, I would argue that these recent character designs (and Tetsuya's work in general) are highly stylized. Now, in the multitude of columns I've written, I'm pretty sure I've managed to avoid posting a dictionary definition of a word and then pointing out how said definition supports my viewpoint, afterwards sitting back in my chair with a smug look on my face as I ate Doritos by the handfuls and slowly suffocated on my own bodily methane expulsions. Unfortunately, I'm ruining the streak right here and now:

styl·ize (stlz)
v. tr. styl·ized, styl·iz·ing, styl·iz·es.

1. To restrict or make conform to a particular style.
2. To represent conventionally; conventionalize.

Of course, being the irasciable, dissenting bastards that you are, you can feel free to write in with your definitions. Remember, agreement is fleeting, but petty vindictiveness can last a lifetime.

No, he kind of does. And that's all I have to say about that.

Yeah, Amano always does the logo, so unless something odd happened, that's his doing. Besides, as a general rule of thumb, if you can't tell if something is supposed to be a whisp of hair, an eye, or the other arm, it was probably drawn By Amano.

I'm afraid these rational, balanced viewpoints won't do at all, Mister Drucker. I'd send you to the back of the classroom, but you're already there for eating glue and paper shreds off of the floor.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I realize that as a quasi-gaming journalist, I'm supposed to use bizarre drool hyperboles at every given chance, and that's something I've not been doing. So, to make it up, I'll say this about the idea of a game combining the environments of Zelda: OoT with the usual FF storyline: drool.

What's odd about a Japanese girl with blue eyes?

I'd tend to agree. I wasn't a big fan of the "back to past glories" idea, although I found FFIX to be enjoyable enough. I don't think I'll look back on it as fondly as I will FFVII and VIII, but it was a fun little game. However, I've spoken of that view plenty of times already, and as many have pointed out, I happen to hold viewpoints, which makes me subjective, which by extension makes me a complete asshole not deserving of oxygen or the amount of space in the universe required for the average-sized human being. So, to balance things out, I've gotten Fritz, our resident old-schooler, to reply.

Fritz: Personally, I'd hate to see the FF series separated into dichotomous "old-school" and "new-school" titles. One of the my favorite aspects of FF IX was that it combined gameplay elements from all the titles, not just the older ones -- sure, it had jumping dragoons and MP, but it also had a card game (albeit a crappy one) and inobstrusive menu displays. I'd like to see FF X adopt a similar approach; there's no reason to eschew good ideas just to appeal to hard-line "old" or "new" gamers.

As for the setting, I need only quote Cid Highwind: "I don't give a rat's ass if it's science or magical power."

Yeah, amazingly, Chris and I occasionally hold different opinions on matters. I know, I know, we're not functioning as a single, streamlined unit as the DAs should, but these things happen. I personally think Nintendo's controllers are always designed with the utmost care and with specific game aspects in mind, making them the most innovative and, as such, emulated on the block. I think the sudden appearance of analog controllers for both the Saturn and PSX is a pretty good example. And while the GameCube's controller may share some superficial aspects with the DualShock 2, it still has functions the DualShock 2 does not, and the button layout is entirely unique.

I can't believe I'm arguing about controllers. We are so amazingly sad. It's great.

Does this mean you're not a big fan of the Mario games?

This letter is absolutely in line with my cantankerous closing reply I wrote up last Sunday. For those of you who may have missed it, I pretty much said that I have no patience for a console manufacturer who has no next-generation launch titles to justify the existence of its machine. That just shows a complete air of levity; as though the company's name itself is reason to exist.

If Microsoft really cared about the games, they would start up a development wing and concentrate on the games. I had no problem with Sega and Nintendo making their own consoles; after all, both companies have excellent first-party support, and when you make the console, you can involve your developers in the process, affording them a more intimate knowledge of the hardware, and hence better games. Then the hardware is designed with the needs and wants of the development teams in mind, and these teams in turn come up with some excellent new titles they've never been able to create before. As such, the console has a reason to exist when it is launched.

Sony, and now Microsoft, are two big names in the consumer electronics business who discovered there was an arm of the industry they hadn't stuck their noses in yet. Sony had a fortunate combination with the original PSX: third party developers were becoming more important at the time the console was released, and it offered the ease of programming and format developers were interested in. I'd even argue that Sony owes as much of their success to what they did right as to what Nintendo and Sega did wrong.

Of course, now we're in an interesting situation. Dreamcast aside, the PS2, X Box, and GameCube are all of comparable power. Third parties have also come to be more important than ever, and most have stated the intention of publishing across all three of these systems. And when you can get the same titles on nearly every system, what sets these consoles apart other than first and second-party development? Something that, last I checked, only Sega and Nintendo have much of. To this day. Something to think about at least. And, hey, something to write about, too. Now I've managed to come up with a reply and a topic for tomorrow.

Closing comments:

Well, I've pretty much painted myself into a corner, haven't I? Now that I've essentially specified a topic, this section of the column is pretty much useless. Just, uhm, write in, okay?

-Drew Cosner, using the power of kung fu to run across water and leap 50 feet into the air