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. Start getting the value you deserve! Don't say we didn't warn you.

I'm going to open tonight by addressing the continuing slew of letters regarding LotR - more specifically, how Tolkien would react to the gauntlet of translations his works have been put through, and will continue to be put through in the near future. Sentiments ranged from "Adapting his books for movies and worse, games, would've been nothing but a big fat slap upside the head to a country gentleman like Tolkien" to "J.R.R. Tolkien was trying to create a world in which people could lose themselves - he'd be delighted with the immersive possibilities video games hold and everyone sucks for being so negative!"

As you've probably guessed by now, I'm not printing LotR-related letters again because there were just too many on-topic viewpoints today in need of advocating. But I just wanted to qualify where I stand on this whole issue.

J.R.R. Tolkien died 7 years before I was born, so unfortunately I never had the pleasure of knowing him personally. This, coupled with my knowing admittedly little of his life save that he had a predilection for languages dead and make-believe, and that the final resting place he shares with his wife romantically styles them "Lúthien" and "Beren," forced me to speak from a purely speculative standpoint yesterday.

The way I see it, Tolkien was a storyteller first and foremost, and all matters financial aside, storytellers live to immerse an audience in an imaginary realm of their creation. Tolkien may very well have been disgusted with the media saturation surrounding the film and the ubiquitous level of merchandising it's spawned, but I have to maintain yesterday's stance and agree with George, here. Whatever efforts EA may actually be putting forward aside, done sincerely and done well, I think a sweeping, epic Middle Earth game of the sort the current generation of hardware finally allows would interest Mr. Tolkien as a storyteller and a lover of stories.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Now, where we we...? Ah, yes - our Hero had just stepped into the yellow scrutiny of the streetlights...

Today deserves an extra "beware" to supplement the old boy in the DA disclaimer - wading in amongst the mammoth blocks of undiluted opinion below will soon find you waist-deep. People had a lot to say on the subject of the console protagonist...

A letter! Shall we burn it?

Central characters in an RPG, eh? Well, it's all totally a matter of opinion. The way I see it, you basically nailed it down in your intro. There's the Squall school of thought, and the Zidane school of thought. The Squall school thinks as follows: If a character keeps to himself, has a cool backstory, can whup things' asses, and is as mysterious and debonair as they come, we've found our perfect candidate. These people adore characters like Magus, Ramsus, Lynx, Fei, Ramza, or Dias. The Zidane school, which I am an unabashed member of, decry that humor and fun are the main dictators of a character's likeability. If a character is fun to be around, is personable, and can take pratfalls hilariously, we love him to death. Heroes such as Stahn, Claude, Crono (hell, anyone in CT besides Magus), Citan, and Edgar fall into this category. It all boils down to this: You're going to spend somewhere between 20 and 80 hours with this guy (in most RPGs). If every action he takes grates on you, you are going to get annoyed real quickly. The Squall school can't stand the hero acting like a moron, losing his cool, embarrassing himself, or generally acting non-heroish. The Zidane school can't stand people acting like jerks, not saying anything, treating their party members like so much baggage, etc. So it's all down to a science of likeability. Frankly, no one can be loved by everyone. I've heard people say they dislike Zidane because he has a tail, or that they like Magus because he has a cape. And we won't even get started on the whole Quina deal... gackkk... --Cidolfas FFCompendium.com / RPGClassics.com

Oi! I thought Magus was pretty fun to be around! In fact, I used to make a point of taking he, Crono, and whomever was required for the various sidequests at the end of the game, just so the silent Crono would force usually reticent Janus to make delightfully cold comments like "A note! Shall we burn it?"

You're right - it's very much a matter of opinion, even within the neat little lines you've drawn up for the various shools of thought.

Nameless, faceless badasses

For me, a good game character is dependent on how well his emotions coincide with my own. I just finished MGS2 last night. Rarely did Raiden ever have the same thoughts as mine. The whole love affair with Rose seems faked. The game starts off in the middle of their relationship. You have no time to develop any relationship with her before she starts in on her romance BS. Snake on the other hand is pulling words right out of my mouth. "You can discuss this later" My sentiments exactly. Plus Snake has that whole Clint Eastwood thing going for him. He an all American badass. If I think to myself "Why is the main character doing that when he should do this?" then I know the character isn't going to hold my interest for long. The worst is Fei from Xenogears. "I don't want to fight" He says that countless times. Quit your whining bi-atch! You have the Uber-Gear. Get in and kick ass. "Fei" should have been spelled "Feh" That's enough

While sparser character development leads many of us to indentify more intensely with the protagonist because we can astrally project unto them or own personalities, oftentimes a more intense bond exists between a player and a character when that character is well-developed, yet well-developed in a way that reminds us of ourselves. If you're yelling "Stupid @#$%! What the @#$% did you do that for?!" at the TV every 5 minutes because you disagree with everything your avatar does and says and are powerless to change it... I'd say it was never meant to be. Which of course brings us back to that whole "to each his own" thing....

Whatever

What makes for a good character in a game? While the easy answer is that a combination of striking visual appearance, whether through originality in design or just pure coolness, is very important. However, the character themselves must leave a mark...and that has to be made by their personality or through some deep characterization. Squall Leonheart left that mark on me. Till this day (and thirteen hours deep into FFX) he still remains the most remarkable protagonist the series has ever produced, in my eyes. Nomura really created on hell of a cool-looking and original character; a guy with a scar and clothes that don't fit him right. Plus, they're leather. Now you've got a badass. Then there is his amazing personality. Yeah, he said "Whatever" a lot, but that was part of what made him so good. Not to say that I'm not fond of cliches, but the usual cheery protagonist was kind of getting old. Too many RPG's used it...and like I said, not that it was bad, but something different would be welcome. That's where Squall came in. He is the MAIN character, and yet he doesn't want a shred of responsibility. I can't count the amount of times I wanted to smack him in the head for being such a jerk! And that's why it was so good. He was a jerk, and you saw the world through his eyes...he wanted everything to leave him alone so he could just trudge on and not bother anyone...until Rinoa came along. Then comes some excellent characterization thanks to Rinoa's character, and BANG. Character development! Not only does he have a cool personality, but he changes! And the change is executed quite well, might I add (better than the plot, eh!) However, I must say...FFX's cast is looking mighty good too... ;)

Whoever sent this letter will undoubtedly be the one and only person who doesn't flame me for saying this:

Squall made FFVIII. (And I am about to un-make it with a flurry of spoilers)

For me, Squall was that rare character who said just what I was thinking, responded in just the way I wanted him to. Squall and I ... we had an understanding. Together we inwardly went "WTF? Desperate bitch." when Quistis took us to Balamb Garden's very own make-out spot, groaned with irritation at the rest of the cast's thinly-veiled attempts to push us closer to Rinoa, and despaired of ever returning from Ultimecia's time-compressed hell because ... well ... we're cynical bastards. So is SonicPanda.

Been there, done that

Personally, I enjoy main characters that have apparently 'done this sort of thing before' and come into the game already fed up. I've played tens of RPGs with the same basic world-in-danger story trappings, and almost every single time I've had to endure some smiling jack-o'-lantern ready to save the day just because he's that pure, and it makes me want to puke. Grandia 1, I think, was brought down by Justin ("I'm going on an adventure, because that's what adventurers do, and I'm an adventurer! WOW! A plant!") to the point where I stopped reading the story-event text altogether. Pissant-supreme,Ryudo, on the other hand, single-handedly makes Grandia 2 a classic in my eyes. Ideally, I'd also like to find such hardasses to NOT be running away from some tragic secret, but I'll take what I can get. I REALLY hope that FFX's Tidus is not the whiny, wide-eyed newborn people have been saying he is, or I'll kill the bastid... SonicPanda

I can safely say that Justin was a major detractor from the whole Grandia experience. Not only was he the classically hyper-happy adventurer wannabe with a well-beyond-winsome sense of wonder (I'm doing it again), but he was unspecific as a character. I never really knew what to make of him. I mean, at the start of the game he's playing ridiculous make-believe games with a bunch of kids that look like assorted barnyard animals, leading me to believe he's like... 12 at the most... and then suddenly he's getting it on with the babe-ish Ms. Feena. What's up with that? Compounding this problem, his patterns of speech seemed to undergo complete metamorphoses after each newly completed quater of the game. Did anyone else notice how the annoying exclamation "BOGUS!" suddenly became his credo halfway through the sage, when he'd never once said it before?

Eager adventurers so unsure as to their identity they begin to confuse themselves with Bill & Ted? No thanks.

It's not bland - it's subtle!

Hey! Alex wasn't *bland*. He just doesn't suffer from that mental instability, fear of rejection, yada yada yada, that defines a modern RPG hero. When Lunar's producer said Alex was a little "weak," in the L2 making-of, he was simply making a comparison to Hiro, who's definitely more outspoken than our Dragonmaster friend. I thought the character development in L:SSSC was rather nicely done, mind you. Everyone underwent a typically gradual Game Arts transition--Alex included. You know, he started out one of those lamely notorious, "All RIGHT, let's go on an ADVENTURE!" types, but ended up being... one of those lamely notorious, "I'll sacrifice my life to save my girlfriend" types. Oh wait. Nevermind... Oh well, at least he hasn't joined the character development ranks of Mario from SMRPG or the Sprite Child from Secret of Mana. ................ ANYWAY, the ironic thing is that a few years ago, Squall was, like, my mental clone. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard this story a thousand times from Paxil-consuming teens. Squall, like Shinji, Cloud, and the countless other instable 'heroes' (hey, it was the thing to do in the anime and RPG world back then!), we found comfort in knowing we could be the same losers in the game as we were in real life. Maybe it's because I'm not like that anymore, maybe it's because of the overload of these types of characters, but I'm just sick of my RPG's featuring "shy, uncharismic, supposed leader #xxxxxxxx"... So what do I like nowadays? Gradual development. Yes, very slow, almost monotonously slow development. Game Arts does this well. Things don't happen in some sort of unworldly grandiose way, with each mission or event changing the characters. You know, it's just, one place to the next, nothing major, just talking, further getting to know the characters, letting them get to know each other. Christ, some of Grandia's (and Grandia II's) best parts were just sitting at the dinner table. Well, getting back to Game Arts. Alright, maybe Alex was a bad example. He is based on a videogame character from 1992, so you can't say he was created with a whole bunch'a depth, or anything. But I tend to like Game Arts characters. Why? Because they aren't molded by a single event. I mean, take FFVIII again. I mean, Squall was a loner all of disc one, all of disc two, then BOOM, Rinoa faints, he's all pissy-pants and sad, suddenly getting all emotional, it was a total, TOTAL change of character. I like my characters to be developed gradually, with initial light-hearted plots reflecting the characters' usually inexperienced, as-of-yet undeveloped nature. As the game continues, the general mood of the game transitions from a happy-cheeriness to an at least semi-darker plot, in which the character have more mature feelings, and have also undergone a change (usually for the better). This is also in tune with the battle system, which gets increasingly complex, having started out with a very, very basic arsenal, and VERY SLOWLY getting deeper. Hey, did you ever notice that? I don't know if this should be a topic or not, but there's a direct correlation between Game Arts' plot, mood, character development, and battle system. They all evolve extremely slowly, and in most cases, realistically. Something to think about. This is especially evident with Lucia's character from Lunar 2. Sorry if I went off on a little Game Arts kick for a second. It's just that it's December, and it's my one-year anniversary with Lunar 2, and my two-year anniversary with Lunar 1. Give me a little privacy. :) -- Steve

Funny you should hold up Lunar as an example of gradual subtlety in character development. Don't get me wrong - I adore Lunar like a firstborn child - but I've always found its highly situational method of character growth pretty obvious. (Lunar SSSC spoilers follow)

Take Mia Ausa for example..

Mia is a wilting, whimpering sack of emotional insecurity who doubts her ability to succeed Lemia, and continues like this, largely unchanged, right up until the moment she's forced by circumstance (namely the Grindery's moving to attack Vane) to show some fortitude and decision. Then, presto! she's ready to accept her destiny as leader of the Magic Guild.

I've always preferred the FFVIII route, and for an appropriate counterpoint, I'm calling in Zell Dincht.

Zell is neither a wilter nor a whimperer, but his insecurity is still made pretty obvious in his quickness to take offense. There is no singular big event in the game that instantaneously transforms Zell into a self-assured individual, but as Squall and the rest of the cast entrust him with recapturing their weaponry, holding down the fort while they nip off to the moon, etc., that insecurity ever so slowly gives way to a kind of shy confidence.

Although I probably read way too much into that.

Vote abolition!

Dear Agent: Since we're talking about RPG's here, I'll assume the 'main character' is the one that the game always forces you to use and gets the most development and screen time. In which case, the best response I can think of to the topic is: let's just get rid of the main character role, a la FF6. Here's a few reasons why this should be used more: Honestly, there will never be a main character that everyone likes. Most people seem to think Squall an asshole, but I've also seen others defend his character. Alex suffers from Tenchi Muyo Syndrome-a complete lack of any personality traits whatsoever; I played Lunar for the supporting cast, especially Nall and Kyle. Same thing for Chronotrigger; thinking back I hardly remember Chrono. With no central character, a person may dislike one of the characters, but at least they wouldn't waste forty hours of their life delving into one character's life in minutia and ignoring the rest of the cast. Variety of gameplay. A big one. Normally (i.e. every freakin RPG I've played but FF6), you're stuck with the main character in your party For The Entire Game! Naturally, he becomes the most powerful character. Even in games that did away with levels (FF8, ChronoCross), the lead character was still ungodly powerful. So what's the strategy? Hack away with your lead man. Yes, this can be fixed and still have a leading man, but by doing away with the lead the only characters that get to demigod status are the ones the player wants to play with. Forcing the player to use a character all the time also cuts down on the characters the player can choose to use, and usually RPG players like that choice. Basically, I want a game that features a cast of well fleshed out characters that I don't really need to identify with, but act like actual human beings. Now, if it's not an RPG, I want a film noir-style down-on-his-luck trenchcoat wearing private dick with a snub nosed .38 in a shoulder holster. the insane bovine Daniel Nelson

I was hoping someone would advocate abolishing the central character paradigm altogether - I think one of the reasons FFVI continues to be such an enduring favorite of mine is because it lacks an omnipresent leading man (or woman, for political correctness' sake - not that we've seen a lot of leading women in RPGs recently). I'd say this mode of casting has the most versatile appeal. Even though a lot of us end up establishing a "main character" anyway (i.e. someone we constantly have in our party, heaping the best equipment upon, etc.), when there's a varied pool of characters from which to choose this person, regardless of what qualities attract you or whether you want to empathize or merely observe, there's a much higher probability you'll find a good match.

A couple thousand words for your perusal

First off, about EA and Origin- EA killed Origin a while back- they have a few people around to maintain Ultima Online, but the folks who worked on Wing Commander and the Ultima series are now employed elsewhere. Oh, sorry, you told me to forget. Just a moment... What the hell's this stuff at the top of my message? I don't know what that's all about. Forget I said anything. Okay, protagonists. I'd definitely go with an actual character as a protagonist over a make-your-own-character any day. I don't play a lot of RPGs (Why do I read the GIA? because of the quality of its writing, and of course for you, Erin, facial hair or no), so I don't get to borrow your examples. I'll use MGS2 instead, since it lets me talk about two player characters in one game. Projecting my personality onto a blank slate character is a laughable idea. I'm an actual human being, and even if his/her personality traits aren't the same as mine, it's easier for me to identify with a character who approximates human complexity than one who effectively doesn't exist. Isn't part of the appeal of games that the let you pretend to be someone else in some other place? And really, I don't have any choice about pretending to be somebody else in a game. A game would have to give me infinite freedom in my actions if I wanted to pretend to be myself in the game, saying exactly what I want to say and behaving exactly as I want to behave. Since that infinite freedom would require infinite processing power, it's never going to happen, so embrace the medium's limitations and give me a character with a specific personality. The fact that when people first play The Sims, they create a sim in their own image who invariably dies friendless (often in a pool of urine) attests to the implausibility of transferring our own personas onto a game character. I get why Raziel wants to take down Kain, and when I played Soul Reaver, I was pretending to be Raziel, acting as he would act. Same for Solid Snake, I guess. Compare this with Raiden, who isn't really complex character, unless 'has an evil girlfriend' is a character trait. He even has the old school fill-in-the-name bit at the beginning, a traditional marker of a vaguely defined character. When I played as Raiden, I was still pretending to be Snake, which, come to think of it, may be what Raiden was doing, too. If I hadn't been pretending to be Snake, I'd have just pretended to be some generic spy-type guy, which isn't really all that inspiring. If the player character doesn't have a lot to him, then the other characters have to pick up the slack in the story, which either doesn't work or has a way of making the player feel sort of irrelevant. Which is pretty much the feeling that I get from the MGS2 you-don't-play-as-Snake-but-he's-still-the-main-character thing. So gimme a guy with a name and a personality. Maybe Squall Lionheart's antisocial personality was highly visible and grating, but if a character fails to respond in any way to events around him (Ryo 'You're moving to Canada? Oh, okay" Hazuki), that lack of personality can be grating too. It's always better to put the player in the shoes of a believable human being. Whether or not it's a human being you want to spend time with is a matter of storytelling ability. --Luke Winikates, not letting the fact that he has no idea who Zidane Tribal is get in the way of joining the discussion.

Dude, I'll fogive your not knowing who Zidane Tribal is only because you've forgotten my Origin faux pas as per instructed.

This letter doesn't really leave me with a lot to say, but it makes some good arguments, all from the perspective of a non-RPG player, so I thought it'd make a nice edition to my little menagerie. What do you think, Vina?

Free Popsicles to anyone who picks up that reference.

Hey! You're aiming that spotlight the wrong way!

Agent Mand-Erin Orange: Hmm... heroes. When I stated thinking about this topic, the first thing that popped into my head is that in competitions with other characters, or in a search for a Legendary Hero, or whatever, I often find myself rooting against the main hero in favor of giving one of the supporting cast a chance in the spotlight. Though video games have tried to move away from it a bit, the one central character generally accomplishes all major tasks and gets all the credit for everything, and it's just kinda unrealistic and grating after awhile. (Surely I can't be the only one who was rooting for Cedric in the fourth Harry Potter book.) Basically, a lot of games try to tell a story of a person who becomes a hero, but a lot of times the heroes pick up the love and respect of everyone around them before they've finished their character growth. The main character usually starts subordinate to someone, but suddenly everyone's appointing him their leader. Squall himself was a well-developed character, but it seemed kinda contrived that everyone else worshipped him so completely. Other than with Irvine in the clock tower, Squall doesn't seem like he should be the leader in the earlier parts of the game, but The Game Says So. If Our Hero is going to be in charge of everything, I'd like to see him really earn everyone's trust first. Even though I didn't like Zidane as much as Squall, FFIX showed him as a worthy leader early on, whereas Squall didn't really seem to invite the status that everyone else thrust at him until later in the game. I'd be tempted to say that maybe mute (or mostly-nonspeaking) characters who the player understands mostly through body language might make the best team leaders, since I accepted Crono and Serge and Ico right away in their respective roles, but then again, the various Ryus from the BoF games don't usually strike me as the "party leader" type at the beginning of the games either. So I don't know, and I don't really have a final comment to summarize the letter. -Toma Levine

Zidane truly did ooze leadership quality, didn't he? It made him much easier to accept in the obscenely powerful lead character role - he was the clear choice to keep his respective ragtag group together.

Interestingly, though, I didn't really feel much of a bond with Zidane until he told everybody to go stick their head in a pig in the "You're Not Alone" scene. Guess I just like bastards, huh.

Pardon the expression

Erin, a good central character has (in addition to what we have seen in, say, FF VII-IX, and the qualities which you will get tons of mail, no doubt): *dramatic pause* A moving in-game-engine face. One with enough animations to display emotions that clarify the dialogue. I'm so sick of scenes like: CharA: "CharB!!!" CharB: "..." CharA: "Don't..." CharB: "..." Performed by 2 "characters" without faces, but 2 static dots and strokes. Granted, games with polygonal game engines were somewhat limited on the PSone, but it still is the reason why I almost always preferred 2D RPGs. Imagine a film actor (and didn't FF claim to be oh so cinematic since F(F)MV(II) ?) without mimic! Impossible. Mirko

I find less fault with games simply lacking the visual oomph to display complex emotions than I do with games that have the power and screw up.

Lunar's little sprites are pretty static, crappy little blobs, but the dynamic character portraits that accompany the dialogue boxes go a long way, IMO, towards clarifying emotional reactions to things.

Not that character portraits often solve the problem. Who remembers the way in which the cast of Beyond the Beyond braved death and dismemberment with an uncomplaining, shit-eating grin on each of their faces every step of the journey?

Unsympathatic to our cause

Erin, I think that what makes a good central character varies from game to game. What makes a character compelling in one world (say, Lunar) might be very different from what makes a chracter compelling in another (say, Shadow Hearts). While Alex (of Lunar) is perfectly suited to the vanilla world of Lunar, the somewhat bland farmboy would be an odd fit for the gothic world of Shadow Hearts. Personally, I like Squall and I think that the reason he is less popular than the likes of Zidane is that think Squall (and FF8) tried a lot of new things (not all of which were entirely successful) while Zidane (and FF9) were very safe creations, doing everything well because they did nothing new. I know a lot of casual rpg players who are bigger fans of Squall (a realistically proportioned character) than then they are of Zidane (a malformed character with a monkey's tail), but they don't feel so strongly that they feel a deep need to go onto the internet and argue his case. I am a veteran rpg player who is appreciates innovation and is not a big fan of superdeformed characters who feels the same way. To answer your last question, I am not in the habit of projecting myself onto rpg characters (if a little green-skinned gnome with a lantern and a lethal knife approached me in real life, I would run away) so consequently I prefer vivid characters to blank slates. - Mark

This letter reminds me to bitch about something near and dear to me. As blank a canvas as game developers may try to make their central characters, as long as this little polygonal person is a young white heterosexual male, not everyone is going to be able to identify with him, blandness be damned. This is just the tip of a larger iceberg: for me, at least, identifying with anyone who makes a living beating the crap out of randomly appearing monsters with a 600-lb sword is kind of hard. I'm really just along for the ride, and seeing as how the ride often tends to last in upwards of 50 hours, I'd rather my traveling companion was a decent conversationalist and a likable (or at least understandable) guy.

In the end

In my mind, what makes a good central character is completely dependant on what kind of game the character is supposed to be the center of. For instance, if you take your typical linear console RPG, the central character should generally be deep and multifaceted. (Chrono Trigger is a fluke.) If a console RPG's gonna be linear, then by Gum, it better have some well thought-out characters. On the other hand, PC-like freeform RPGs really ought to have blank slate characters. Being in first person, a la Daggerfall or Morrowind, helps immensely in this regard, because you don't have to stare at a character, which is obviously not, the whole time you're playing the game. Since the game is freeform, shouldn't the character be as well? On the other hand (which would be my third hand, but who's counting?), fast-paced, flashy, and style-before-substance plot action games need straight-up badasses. Depth isn't necessary; all that matters is the style factor. Dante and Solid Snake are prime examples, or even the dynamic duo, Scorpion and Mad Dog, of Contra fame. Basically, the character should fit the game. Duh. -Eightball, prefers the badasses in the end

Way to tie it all up for me, dude.

Your daily dash of shit bits

Hullo, Erin. I was surprised not to see more of Ico involved in yesterday's discussion; the team that produced *that* game is just about the only team I would give any margin of trust in handling a LotR game. Ico's the only game in my adult life to ever produce a sense of wonder and evoke a genuine emotional response. Compared to it, every other game comes across with all the subtlety and finesse of an 8th grade psychology paper rubber cemented to the end of a fully texture-mapped, purple and yellow sledge-hammer wielded by a belching former Packers linebacker ...with a mullet. And really odd shorts. Eh hem. Anyway, I'd tell you what I like my lead RPG characters to be like, but there aren't any that really stand out as likeable or even realistic. RPGs for me now are mostly about the worlds, and the characters are merely a vehicle through which I can explore and learn about that world's history, people, crisis, and conflicts. I guess that's why Chrono Trigger and Cross worked so well for me; if you think about it, those weren't really about the characters, they were about the worlds in which they lived. That to me is preferable to a bad, pop romance, "character driven" story, in which the characters are either plucky or morose, and lack the depth to react realistically in different situations. Like, say, being hit on by an attractive, intelligent young woman, and finding out that time as you know it may cease to exist. Whatever. The contrast between the bad writing and glorious visual detail is becoming so great that in a few years, it'll be as painful as watching William Shatner star in James Cameron's up coming Victorion science fiction thriller, "Shakespear for Lovers: Puck's Revenge". Well, I apologize. I still like my RPGs, I really do, and I usually try not to let my letters degenerate into bitter rants. It's just the voice acting and that god awful light pop crystal theme remix were the last straws. It's like having Sh!@ Bits sprinkled on top of an otherwise excellent ice-cream sundae. A $50 ice-cream sundae. -lowtech, saw better lip synching in "The Five Deadly Venoms"

He doesn't realize it, but he's just condemned Drew to his Saturday topic...

Closing Comments:

I'm not going to pose you a direct question like I usually do - instead I'm just going to attempt to jumpstart some thought processes, and unload whatever mess results on Drew, laughing the whole while at his helplessness and misfortune. Games have visually outgrown the trite little tales they tell. How much longer d'you think it'll be before we start to see narratives that live up to, say, the graphic prowess of Squaresoft? Do we necessarily even want them to? It'd undoubtedly mean dark, weighty plots reminiscent of popular literature and cinema, which could easily destroy the last shreds of "fun" in gaming. There. I've made some thought-provoking statements. Now go forth and bury Drew with some of your own.

-Erin Mehlos