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. I'm living in an RPG endgame. Don't say we didn't warn you.

The amount of support we've gotten in the past couple days has been staggering in the best of ways. We've raised so much in such a short time; I hate to sound greedy, but where once I would consider us lucky if we made enough to keep us going for three months, now I find myself rooting for enough donations to go all the way and get Andrew in that silly outfit again. Hopefully, we'll have a good enough incentive by tomorrow afternoon to make that happen ... but for now, the column.

What worries me about this letter is that I actually got it before the recent server nightmares, during which I got very little sleep indeed. Let's hope this man does indeed put his strange and terrible power to a better use, or we could all be in trouble.

Thanks for feeling exactly the same way I do and writing in about it, so I don't have to type up my thoughts. The only difference is that I'm still fairly certain we'll see the SNES FF remakes on GBA eventually. From what I understand, the big reason that NCL is frowning on Square developing for the handheld is that they're not supporting the GameCube at the same time. As the only viable handheld on the market in America (and as the dominant one in Japan), the GBA is a money machine for practically anyone who wants to develop for it--but the GameCube is an untested system facing two major competitors, and needs muscle. Should the rumors about Final Fantasy XI for GameCube prove true, I'm sure that FFIV-VI on GBA will follow suit.

That's true, but it's always the case with launch lineups for any console RPG. So the GC only has a From title in the way of launch RPGs--so did the PS2, as you're well aware. And it's not true that there's nothing interesting on the horizon; rumors persist that Dragon Quest will be a Nintendo-based franchise again, and Rare's Kameo: Elements of Power is already confirmed. So give it time, there are undoubtedly some good things that just can't be announced at the moment.

Interesting theory. My opinion is that Miyamoto has repeatedly stated his love for Samba de Amigo in the past year or so, and the new gadgets that his character sport reflect nothing more than his newfound love for external peripherals. Which just proves once and for all how influential and groundbreaking that game was. Ahhh, Samba ...

And by the way, I don't think anyone who can come up with Pikmin is in danger of going Borg in the near future.

I own a Nintendo 64 and regret the purchase--but even I know you're wrong. I shouldn't even have to recite this particular litany by now, but here you go anyway: cheap optical media, simpler development tools, hardware on par with the competition, quality third-party games, etc. etc. blah blah blah. The GameCube is a veritable object lesson in how to correct the mistakes of the past, and if it fails, it won't be for any of the same reasons that the Nintendo 64 "failed." (Which it didn't, by the way. It may not have been for me, but it did very well for itself.)

While we're arguing about things, let me educate you on the difference of saying something is "good" and that it is "the pinnacle" of its field. To wit: nobody ever argued that Zelda OoT and Majora's Mask had the pinnacles of storyline or dialogue. We just said they were good.

Maturity from someone who'd know

Spaceworld. Nintendo. Link. The whole fuss about 'Kiddy' vs. 'Mature' games. I am rather serious about games, and gaming. In point of fact, have utterly devoted my life to games. 6524 games sit on my many shelves, and I have played every one of them, except the two I just got today. I have worked for most every major American game company as everything from an artist and animator to a designer and consultant. I live games. It's what I do, other than my online comic strip, or tending to my three spouses, during all of the hours of my day. It is more than a career...it is my very existence. So what does this have to do with anything? I just realized something else, something that I just don't bother thinking about myself very often. I am 41 years old. Twice the age of most of your readers, at least, I would venture, and I have led a most extraordinary, eccentric, and diverse life by any possible measure. I am apparently considered to be rather mature, but not in the way that most people consider the term. Not old-mature. Worldly mature. So, perhaps, just perhaps, the above gives me some slight credibility to say something of value about the whole matter of 'kiddy' versus 'mature' games, and what it means to BE mature with respect to gaming as either a hobby, a career, or a lifestyle. The whole fuss going on is a bit silly, and I would like to tell you why. The immature person is by definition insecure. A mature person is secure in themselves, and in what they like, they have developed taste and discernment because they have had enough experience of the world to make valid judgements; they have paid attention. The immature person is worried about labels. Adolescents illustrate this especially....their bodies and their world is changing, and they are awkward because they are still trying to define themselves and how they fit in the world. They worry about things like maturity precisely because they are unsure what it even is. A good game, as the wisest among this forum have often stated, is FUN. Oh, it may teach, or be ground-breaking, or elevate this, or improve that, but the bottom line is that playing is more than worth your time, it is joy itself. That, beyond all the hyperbole, is the point. When a person actually achieves a modicum of real maturity in life, they know who they are. They do not need to concern themselves with what others think, and they know that fun comes in all forms. The truly mature person never allows themselves to ever become old. Being 'old' is a stupid role to play. It is not being one's true self. And what IS a person who is mature, true to their core? They are as much child as they are adult. They can play any part, but not become stuck, they can enjoy anything that is fun, simply because it is fun, and adjust their mind to fit what they are doing. They can play like a kid, or like an adult, equally. They contain all that they have ever been, and are comfortable, even overjoyed by that fact. They can be silly, as well as stern, and be good at either. Very few human beings ever achieve this in life, as you may have noticed, in the manner of your parents, the people you work for, the people around you, most people in general. But it is possible, and you can do it, if you want to. What this means is that to such a person, a hyper-cute, brightly colored, silly, funny, giggle filled game is just as appealing, just as wonderful in every way, as a dark, serious, intellectual, brooding, violent, and tragic game. If both are pleasurable, then the issue of who they are made for is -utterly- irrelevant. The cute game can be enjoyed because it is cute...not as nostalgia for lost childhood, but because true childhood still exists in the mature life. The dark game can be enjoyed because it is dark, because the fact of one's adulthood is self-evident. There is no question, no worry, no issue in either case. One simply switches gears, and plays. What I want to say to you all is this: the real value of real maturity does not ever lie in "putting aside the things of childhood". That is merely growing old, dying slowly, inside. Real maturity is in forever being childlike, because that is where unalloyed joy ultimately lives, with the capacities of a worldly adult always at hand. Shigeru Miyamoto is not catering to children, believe it or not. He is making games for himself to enjoy, and for anyone else like himself, that is to say an adult who is truly mature...childlike in the capacity for pure, simple, innocent joy in pretty things, able to find depth and wonder in those things, and to appreciate the magic inherent in a fairytale expression of art. Although his games sell to children, he is really making them for truly mature adults. That is why his games have adult depths, despite childlike appearances. Like great English children's literature, like Alice in Wonderland, or Gulliver, the real work was done for the adult doing the reading to the child. In the case of games, the adult is playing to the child still alive within themselves. This is how you may tell the mature gamer from the one still trying to grow up: the mature gamer loves cute as well as grim, and has no problem transposing one to the other at a moments notice. Really growing up means you can love it ALL, as long as it's good...and demand that it be nothing other than it is. -Jennifer Diane Reitz UnicornJelly.com

Well spoken, as usual. Miyamoto said in the Spaceworld roundtable discussion (which I would link to if only there was a proper site there for the linking) that he doesn't see his games as being for kids but rather for all ages, which there's something to be said for. It was also the view that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien took when creating their children's books, and you can mark their success by the fact that these days, those books aren't considered "kiddie" at all.

It strikes me that most of what's considered "mature" is, in fact, for teenagers and not adults. When I'm home on break from college, the movies I'll suggest that we go see as a family are very rarely the same ones I would go see by myself. My parents would just rather see Shrek or America's Sweethearts than Memento or Sexy Beast, and it's not entirely to do with taste. They've moved past the stage where they need to have edgy, nigh-nihilistic messages leered at them by books or movies. If they played videogames, then Miyamoto's universal sensibilities would be exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to them--that, and the fact that he's actively working to make his games simple enough for anyone to control. Nintendo and Miyamoto know exactly what they're doing, never fear.

I really hate to be the one to break it to you, but From Software is developing Rune. From Software has also been responsible for such gems as Eternal Ring, Evergrace, and the King's Field series. Even on their reputation alone, this would be one to watch out for rather than to look forward to--but we don't have to rely on reputation, as our own Drew Cosner had a chance to play it at Spaceworld. His thoughts:

"It's a total Might and Magic, Gauntlet-style dungeon hack. You run around in terribly uninteresting environments, randomly encountering enemies. (Goody.) As an example, the level I played was just a dark-forest deal; drab pallatte, nothing remarkable about it. You can tell how hyped I am about this game."

There you have it, straight outta Spaceworld. And you wondered why I didn't mention it earlier in the list of "real RPGs for GameCube" ...

I have to say that I'm still not entirely convinced that Fox and company will be a good fit for the exploration sequences, though I am interested in the new Arwing stages. However, my reservations on the change of license are pretty much gone anyway, since it seems that Rare is keeping some form of their old characters around instead of jettisoning some of the most original designs the company has yet produced. So I'll probably end up getting this one, too.

And now time for some letters on death. I feel even more equipped than ever to handle this subject after a few days of the server being dead, dealing with a bureaucracy and wishing I was dead myself, and giving serious thought to faking my own death in order to avoid playing Beyond the Beyond. So hey ho, let's go, and mind the spoilers on your way.

The phenomenon of NPC deaths is an odd one. On the one hand, frequently they're telegraphed to the point of laughability; when your party has to go assist a group of dragon slayers whose number includes a brave soul who only recently asked his sweetheart to marry him, he may as well forget about ever coming back alive.

But on the other hand, since they're not in your party, any NPC is potentially fair game for getting killed off, so it can be a bigger shock when it's handled well. As in most things, it's not so much the concept that's faulty as the execution.

This was pretty much my thinking on the issue of why character death isn't so surprising anymore. Developers don't seem to realize that death can be used for so many other purposes other than cheap shock value. I can think of a few ways to make death more interesting, and I'm just a lowly letters columnist. You could take the approach Brian de Palma used in his version of Mission: Impossible and make death a constant rather than a one-time-only event, creating an atmosphere of mounting horror and suspense--imagine if you started with a large party at the beginning of the game, and it got smaller as the story progressed, rather than the other way around. Or rather than presenting death as a shock, let the character be marked for death, and aware of that fact, so that it gives his or her actions more weight as he gets closer and closer to the inevitable moment. Or, since we're generally talking about fantasy RPG worlds where resurrection isn't uncommon, let's see the effect of that resurrection for a change. Would that party member have caught a glimpse of an afterlife? Would they even want to be alive again after going through dying once? The possibilities are many, but as yet unexplored.

What you say is true; if developers did a better job of developing party members, they could probably bring out the death trick as many times as they wanted and it would never lose its edge. Cinema has famously been described as "A series of scenes put in a particular order designed to leave the viewer with no choice but to feel one particular way," and RPGs are much the same. If they were designed a little bit better in such a way that we actually felt sorry for the characters meeting their fates, it would be one thing, but many developers fail to accomplish this.

This is another option that I'm really surprised no one's gone with yet. Chrono Trigger came close when Lavos killed off Crono, but that didn't stick. I'd be greatly interested in an RPG that completely switched characters midway through, due to the untimely death of the first hero.

I'm glad you brought up the point about characters being wounded instead of killed, because I'd like to use it to illustrate something I thought was more powerful than many a character death: Meryl's ventilation at the hands of Sniper Wolf. Conor R. brought it up earlier, but let me elaborate here. It was a grisly, protracted scene, and it packed all the more punch for it. Meryl was a well-defined character who was being made to suffer before our eyes, which if you think about it, can be more painful to watch than a quick and instant kill. I also wonder, incidentally, why we don't see this kind of thing employed more often on the villain--"death's too good for them" and all that. But that's a discussion for another time.

Closing Comments:

In only his second day as Double Agent, Chris came up with a fantastic idea to replace Drew's old graphical "awards." For everyone who wrote a truly insightful or otherwise stellar letter, he'd compose a gushing hagiography in their honor. I was always sad to see he didn't use it that often. So allow me to pick it up, just this once, in his stead.

Consider the name "Chris Jones." It speaks of a certain dry unassuming nature, as indeed the surface level of his work can be read as. Crack the surface of the man or his columns, however, and you shall find a depth equalled only by the darkest of the bathyspheres on the ocean floor. Rare is he who can wax so eloquently on such diverse subjects as console RPG storylines, hardware sales, control schemes, artwork, music, and so much more. Lesser columnists flounder about, trapped in their own preconceptions and misinformation; only a master such as Chris Jones can step out of his own position and survey both it and the opposition viewpoint with the same harsh, unyielding eye. But never let it be said that he failed to give credit where credit was due, or admit error when a supplicant had gotten the better of him. Chris Jones' humility has served him just as well as his keen insight and vast knowledge, and our lives all have been enriched by his daily offering.

Tomorrow is his last day, so why don't you give it a try? Send him your own hagiography, and if you don't feel up to that, then at least don't let him go without seeing him off properly.

-Nich Maragos, getting all misty