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. There is a light and it never goes out. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Hello, everyone! Andrew here. I'm not going to bore you with tales of my weekend; instead, let's skip straight to the letters.

This is definitely a major problem in games nowadays; titles are often designed so that puzzles and sidequests can't be solved without shelling out another $12.95 for the Official Strategy Guide. The developers put impossible-to-solve content in their games specifically to increase guide sales -- no foolin'. Square's Final Fantasy series has evolved into a particularly guilty offender; many of Final Fantasy VIII and IX's sidequests make no sense are are impossible to solve even with a strategy guide. Case in point being:

The Card Queen quest has to be one of the most offensive sidequests around. It would be nearly impossible without a FAQ and a list of locations and how to find the Card Queen. Even with that much outside information, however, it still depends almost entirely on random chance. See also: Final Fantasy VIII's Mr. Monkey quest. Not only is that quest nonsensical and random, the developers go so far as to tell you that "YOU SUCK!" Thanks for the words of encouragement, guys.

Many writers shared Dan's feelings towards the Tower of Babel, but his was one of the few letters printable on a quasi-family website. Xenogears' little foray into platforming fun is widely regarded as a terrible, terrible mistake. For those who missed this part of Xenogears, here's the rundown. Ridiculous jumps within a poorly designed engine are one thing. Penalizing missed jumps by having you fall down several levels is unpleasant. But when you can get hit by a random encounter in midjump -- and then sink like a stone when the battle is over -- the developers have crossed some sort of sacred line.

Progressive-minded gamers everywhere seem to be taking a stand against random encounters. For anyone who has a soft spot in their heart for random encounters: they're not some fundamental part of the genre, and they're not spiritually pure or integral to a game's success. They were a cheap hack created for Dragon Warrior in the mid-1980s because the NES wasn't powerful to show an overworld thriving with enemies. This is 2001, and we're using 128-bit machines. More and more RPGs are either eliminating random encounters entirely or providing creative mechanisms around them (such as Final Fantasy VIII's Enc-None). As much as I love Skies of Arcadia -- which is a lot -- I must admit that it would have been even better without random encounters. Fortunately, many developers are taking steps to eliminate encounters. Final Fantasy X's developers at least had it in mind when designing the game, even if they couldn't implement it. It's taken nearly two decades, but the genre is finally starting to cast off its 8-bit roots.

I don't want to reopen the whole can of worms about what makes a good ending -- but I think people on all sides can agree that a screen of text saying "To Be Continued" is unacceptable.

I have friends who have played through Xenogears -- one of them twice -- and all stare at me blankly when I ask them how they feel about the Chu-Chu Orgy. Apparently it's not uncommon for gamers to simply repress any memories of the passage. Not that I can blame them, it's hideous. Don't believe that this oh-so-deep, oh-so-insightful game contains scenes where fluffy pink furballs get their mack on? It does. Oh, it does.

I guess you have to do something to pass the time in-between crucifixions.

Most ancient, grizzled gamers have a number of war stories regarding passwords under their belt. Some early titles (and even a few later ones) have password systems that are downright vindictive. Whether it's the letters O and o and the number 0 all looking exactly alike or a fanciful (and illegible) medieval script, replaying hours of a game due to an "invalid" password was not at all uncommon.

This strikes me as an odd stance -- to not like games because their likeable? but I can see where you're coming from. However, Skies was my favorite traditional RPG of the year 2000 (I count most of Square's "Summer of Adventure" as 1999, having played the imports). Moreover, yesterday evening I finished playing through Paper Mario and enjoyed every moment greatly. Why is this?

After watching almost every "seriously" plotted game of the past five years self-destruct badly (there are a few exceptions, like Vagrant Story and the PC Planescape Torment, but coherency is rare), I've given up turning to games for deep and insightful storylines. If it's deep and insightful I want, I have a literary tradition in the English language dating back nearly 400 years, and even longer if I'll delve into translations from other languages. All I want from a game now is to enjoy myself.

That doesn't mean I want my games to necessarily be charming and colorful -- too much of that and I'd go crazy. What that means is that I can't stand games with an "agenda," where the developer is trying to shoehorn a mismatched message into the medium. I want my games to understand where they're coming from, to understand what I as a gamer am getting out of them, and to respect those boundaries. In otherwords, I want my games to be games, and to accomplish whatever further effects they seek within that context.

I don't need them to move me emotionally (though they can); I don't need them to change the way I look at life (though they may). What I want from a game is for it to make sense and deliver a cohesive experience. That means the narrative should respect its place as the larger tapestry of the game. Everything the story chooses to impart should be something that I, as a gamer, am concerned with -- not something that the director, as a socially conscious human, feels he has to get off his chest.

Finally, the games you mention hardly fail to innovate. Pokemon introduced a social aspect to gaming via trading as well as the now infamous two-color release system. Skies significantly raised the bar for environment and dungeon design; winding hallways just won't do anymore. And Paper Mario melded action RPG and platforming elements with a traditional RPG battle system and setting. Maybe not revolutionary, to be sure, but in the usually stagnant RPG genre, noteable advancements nonetheless.

Closing Comments:

Chris comes back tomorrow, and the last letter provides ample fuel for discussion. What do you want from an RPG narrative? Does it need to have a "deep" story and make you think -- even if it can sometimes be ponderous? Or would you prefer a shallower gamer that doesn't get bogged down in its own metaphysical quandaries? Let Chris know.

-Andrew Vestal, writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg.