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. All your daily nutrition in one protein blast. Don't say we didn't warn you.

I'm in a state of gastro-intestinal distress, so ... moving right along....

"What is the name of that freaking song?!"

Greetings Even if there's a good argument to be made in favor of being able to carry 16743 items on you, not really having to eat/sleep/whatever or being able to shrug of savage blow with ease(rpgworld anyone?) But I gotta admit, a full score by Uematsu or Mitsuda in would really put a new spin on our daily lives; airship theme when we drive, overworld or town theme when walking, you meet a freind you hear the jingle, booming battle music when your in a rush and it would REALLY come in handy with your mate. Of course there's always the chance that it could turn you insane in the long run, but it's still beats the crap outta what they play at work. Nick-V, I wish I could save/load

Obviously this reminds me of the village of Lyton in L:SSS, one of the few RPG hamlets I've encountered where the villagers are aware of the ubiquitous background music. Unfortunately for them, said background music has been hopelessly screwed up by the misplacement of a couple rocks.

And if the misplacement of a couple rocks could mean the difference between Barry White and Bjork, I think I'm gonna have to vote no.

Tonight I dine on One True Love

Fraulein Mehlos: It's not even a question - there's one RPG cliche above all others that I would love to live out. What cliche is this, you ask? It's the cliche where I am a dorky guy who is suddenly surrounded by beautiful, intelligent, funny women - all of whom are vying for my attention! Now sometimes the main character has only One True Love (tm), but even that'd be okay with me. You just can't deny guys like Cloud, though - he's so pimp he's even got the guys after him. :-) As a side note, I suppose I already have the dorky part of the cliche down. Now where're the girls? -SoulSabre... "Tonight I dine on turtle soup!"

The downside of this is that RPGs are in the habit of forcing a specific, predetermined girl on the hero (who's usually around 18 years old, brunette, and noticeably less well-endowed than the rest of the field) -- and what happens if she's just not your type...?

Hecka romantic

Oh sure, it might be fun to toy with the possibilities of real-life RPG rules, with guiltless robbery and the mindless slaughter of every non-speaking animal, but there's a piper to pay. Picture the following: You're surrounded by beautiful women, and the only one everyone feels you're destined to love is the whiny, sensitive, pure one who gets on your nerves. Deciding you'd rather eat broiled worms than date her, you blow her off and offend the other women. And then comes that horrible night when a gun-toting macho-man shows up to take you on a date... SonicPanda

All I can say is ... I pity the foo'....

Cusa baubma ryja duu silr desa uh draen ryhtc

Erin, To make my point clear, this letter shall be written in Al Bhed. E fecr dryd ajanouha ajanofrana cbuga dra cysa myhkiyka, eh dra cysa teymald. Mad'c zicd lymm drec ciban myhkiyka Engrish. Ev drec fana du rybbah, E luimt jeaf ymm uv so yhesa y vaf ruinc cuuhan, hud ryjehk du fyed vun ed du pa cippat, pid dryd'c hud dra uhmo naycuh. Buun Yuna luimt muca ran cbaylr esbatesahd yc famm. Sucd uv ymm druikr, E's sygehk drec fecr vun dra lremtnah. E's cina ed fuimt paheved dras. Cusaruf. Syopa. Cu, oayr...iss...rar. Kiacc E nyh uid uv drehkc du cyo uh-dubel. Yrr...Cu, caah Lord of the Rings oad? ~Beowulf_VII, too sick to think straight...obviously ~Live and Let Live

Fortunately, until such time as this particular dream comes true, there's Babelfish ... and more importantly, people bored enough to provide things like this.

Why couldn't they add a soft reset?!

Knight-Erint - I'd like to be able to save my life's progress. Not just before major confrontations, but also before small choices during conversations that have no effect on the Big Picture, but just give slightly different dialogue. That way I could see every possible variant of the conversation, then reset and pick my favorite. -Toma Levine, reading the town poetry. It's composed entirely of punctuation marks.

Personally I'd settle for having minimal lists of dialogue options to choose from in conversation. Can you imagine how many arguments you could avoid if you were presented with just two or three dialogue options, one of which is obviously more agreeable than the alternatives? Never again would you have to fumble through a date vaguely hoping that was the right thing to say.

March of time

Besides the obvious cliche of having every major event that takes place in the world somehow involve me and a quest--I think the most desirable cliche to me right now would be the faster-than-real-life clock. While things like this may be unbearable in Pikmin or Harvest Moon--the Shenmue version would really help me out in real life. I'm not moving boxes from one palette to another with a sexually repressed dock worker or anything--but sometimes work drags, you know? Just to tie yesterday's dicussion in, I actually got the fun job of creating a database of information from those little consumer response cards in your instruction manuals. Yeah, you heard me. Write legibly, everyone! I'm serious, you've all given me eye-strain. A week of that for 8 hours a day had me wishing for that sweet "5 minutes to an hour" time ratio--sometimes you just need your Super Hang-On fix. Then again, the 2-choice dialogue tree could sure help with the ladies... Tomm "Nich Maragos puts food on my table" Hulett

Well if you're going to kompress time like that, you'd best carry an Ocarina and have Song of Time on speeddial, or else all the simplistic dialogue trees in the world aren't going to help you with the ladies.

I wish I had slimes in my back yard

Currently, I'm struggling to find worthwhile employment. So if it were possible for my life to be like an RPG, allowing me to walk out into my back yard and bean squirrels or slimes with my T-Square of Justice (+4) to collect gold/gil/gald/zenny/potch/whatever, I'd be all over it. Of course with my luck I'd live a few blocks from the final dungeon and all the randomly-encountered wildlife in the area would be about 35 experience levels ahead of me. Although it probably wouldn't matter. Some jackass "hero" would be inevitably along to dig through my dressers and take all my hard-earned money anyway. JP

Funny. I never knew you lived on the East Coast....

"Got Milk?" was just the beginning....

Erin - The USA government would rename itself The Evil Corporation, Catholicism would become like it was in the middle ages, an enforced system of buy your way to heaven. Places like Lawerence Harbor, NJ would carry the finest in everything whereas San Francisco CA would have all crap, just because Lawerence Harbor is closer to the last boss, which happens to be the President of The Evil Corporations sidekick. When I hung out wiht my friends, and we decided to go somewhere else, they would all walk in to me and I would represent the party, untill one of my friends got greedy and hit the select button untill they were visible. Airships would be left around by the Ancient, Advanced Civilization for my convenience. And in order to save the world, I'll need ot complete a string of fetch quests, startign with my mom calling my cell phone and demanding I pick up milk. Peace, Ray Stryker...sure Mom, I'll get the milk. But the quest will be dangerous, so you will have to give me my dead father's legendary sword, which happens to be the weakest weapon in existance....

C'mon, Stryker. You ought to know by now that a sword will never be the weakest weapon in existence....

"Fire away, motherf*ckers!"

Dear Agent Mehlos, I think we can all agree that the old "any gun is always much, much weaker than a sword or dagger" cliche is a very useful one to have around. Particularly if you happen to find yourself in a crime infested area. Imagine... a person could walk down the streets of Compton with virtually no fear of bodily harm! Fire away, motherf*ckers! I only lost 1/10 of my hit points after that hail of bullets from your Tek-9's and AK's! Hahahahahaha! -JC, waiting for the day that a Square hero doesn't carry a dagger, sword, or double-ended polearm. NRA 4ever!

Somehow I don't imagine the NRA's image being quite the same if any given firearm only dealt as much damage as the average Daisy air rifle.

Alcan's Quest

Disclaimer: The following is a true story. Almost. One day I was sitting at home, fiddling with a few potions of various colors as is my wont, when in rushed a messenger from the King. "Come quickly!" he said, "the King needs your help!" And he collapsed on the floor, breath spent. Curious, and mildly alarmed, at what could have brought the messenger here with such haste, I left my house and headed for the castle; I could not have been surprised more when I saw that the castle's lights were out completely, where they should have been on providing a beige-and-blue counterpart to the bright sunlight. I quickly headed to the Interior Royal Chamber, where the King discussed all manner of things. The King soon noticed my presence, and spoke up even as I entered the room. "Alcan, we need your help," he said, a note of concern in his voice. "It's broken." "It?" I didn't quite catch the meaning. "It. The Crystal," said the King. "Oh," said I. "Oh dear." I had not even imagined this possibility. The Crystal should have been unbreakable. Oh, it had been known to wobble from time to time, but it could always be counted on to resume its eternal rotation. What could have happened? I hurried down to the basement of the castle, to the Crystal Room, and was joined on the way by a Crystal Worker. I had never actually met the Crystal Workers before; it was their job to ensure that the Crystal kept functioning smoothly, and they were always careful to stay out of my way when I came to make adjustments. "What happened?" I asked the Crystal Worker. "..." The Crystal Worker responded with a silence that spoke volumes. I hurried on, my anxiety heightened even more. But even that anxiety was not enough to prepare me for what I saw when I entered the Crystal Room. The Crystal, which should have been lazily spinning on its net of ether, lay broken into hundreds, perhaps thousands of shards on the floor. The net itself was almost unrecognizable, its metal mesh now a mere fused hunk of metal, good for nothing (though the King later said it would at least be "good for a doorstop"). And to top things off, the round Record Platter, on which everything which occurred in the castle was microscopically recorded, was likewise melted into an unrecognizable form--and the information on it, lost forever. "What happened?!" Shock made itself heard in my voice. "Kary..." the Crystal Worker said slowly. Kary... the Fiend of Fire. That would explain the net and Record Platter. Well, there was nothing to be done for it now but replace them, and try to reassemble the crystal--before it lost its gold shimmer completely. Although I am skilled in many things, even I cannot be in two places at once, and since time was of the essence, I told the Crystal Worker to find a new ether net for the Crystal while I departed to search for a new Record Platter. I will omit that part of my journey for brevity, but suffice it to say that I visited the Ice Cave, and after several close scrapes in which I was very thankful for the ribbon I had tied on my finger--in the treasure box, I found... PLATTER I returned with the Platter to the Crystal Room, where the Crystal Worker had already located a new net and set it on the Crystal's stand; the ether put off a cool blue glow, and it was refreshing to see that at least something was going well. But the greatest part of the task--reassembling the Crystal itself--was still at hand, and time was short. I took one short break to explain the situation to the King, who nodded solemnly. "We can do little but pray," he replied. I returned to the Crystal Room, and worked furiously; the King soon joined me, not saying a word. The gold continued to drain out of the Crystal's shards, and we were afraid we would be too late. Then, suddenly, a golden light flooded the room, from the doorway, from cracks in the walls, from everywhere and nowhere, and we fancied we could hear the voices of the other nobles praying, wishing for our success. Our strength was restored, our weariness gone, and most importantly the Crystal's color had come back. We set about our task with a renewed vigor, and finally finished our task: the Crystal was whole once again! I carefully set it upon the ether, and gave it a gentle push; to everyone's relief, it began lazily spinning once again. Problem solved! Well, not quite; there was still the issue of restoring as many records as we could. We were helped in that task, however, by the castle's google-eyed librarian, who had copied and saved a surprising amount of information. While some records were lost forever, the vast majority were recovered, and within a few weeks all was once again well. I breathed a sigh of relief and headed home, feeling the pleasure of a job well done. --Alcan, who admittedly made a lot of that up--but it really happened! Honest!

And the moral of this beautiful tale...? Give generously, readers.

Another patently bad idea exposed

Squeakypants, While I'm sure a lot of people are quite thrilled about living in an RPG, I feel there are a great deal dire consequences associated with this prospect. Sure, who wouldn't want to ride Big Bird to work (lord knows it would help the air pollution problem...though the street cleaners will have their work cut out for them), but it's just not worth the tradeoff. For example, you may have noticed I did not refer to you by your given name in the salutation, but by a moniker of my own devise. Just think, each time you met someone new, they would have the ability to change your name as they please (though perhaps not exactly as I have in the example. Sorry about that, SQKYPNTS). And they would, too--I doubt I'm the only one here that walked the streets of Midgar proudly bearing the title "Mr. Fluff." But lets turn our attention from all the possibilities of minor annoyances before we bury ourselves in them, and focus on larger, more pressing issues. First, let's talk overpopulation. We're running out of space as it is, but just think what a fix we'd be in if everyone could just use a Phoenix Down on somebody they didn't want to be dead anymore. I mean, you can get them just about anywhere for around 100 G, and with the current G to USD conversion, having Great Great Great Grandpa attend the next family reunion winds up costing little more than paying some hairy guy to unclog your toilet for you. Now, I know you wanted a lighter topic for Friday, but I'm afraid we're gonna have to discuss world economy here. If Little Bunny FruFru and his fuzzy bretheren all wandered the forest carrying cash, why on earth would people get up before the sun and fight traffic to slave away in the office all day when they can just get Gramps's broadsword down from the attic and slay the week's paycheck. In no time at all, they'd be leveling up and fighting less fluffy and more dangerous animals, like cows or something. These would invariably carry around more cash, because they have bigger numbers under their names. Since no one but the top executives with the lucrative salaries are bothering to come into work anymore, and they have no idea how to do actual work, all of corporate Earth disintigrates (though it would probably do so with pretty colors. Point in RPGs' favor). This mass and total economic collapse may not have the greatest impact, since Wal-Mart would now exclusively carry sharp hurty things, but unless you're Jewish, at some point you were probably going to eat that poor unsuspecting pig you just burglarized. Couple that with the fact that farmers have left the fields to rot while they root out prairie dogs for cash and prizes, and everybody goes real hungry real quick. It should be pretty clear at this point that you can't just wish for the world to be an RPG. The problem is you'd have way too many player characters, and we've seen how well that works out. You wouldn't even have time to starve to death, because the moment you step foot outside of your house to hit up (literally) the neighbor's dog for cash, some juvinile deliquent with nothing better to do than make life difficult for those around him would swiftly dispatch you with his Blade of Hacked Stats +6 and run off with all of your posessions yelling "Ph34R the p0w3r of MaStAkIlLa_666! I rulz j00, l4m4!!!!!!1" The conclusion is quite obvious. Having the real world obey RPG logic is a patently bad idea. Unless, of course, I'm the only one who gets to use it, because I coud've REALLY used a save point before my last circuits test. -Wise Master Hibb

Agreed.

...

Wait a minute ... I've given you the last word in two consecuvtive columns. That kind of publicity isn't free, you know. I'm going to require body parts in exchange, now, so please select three you can do without.

Cuddles for Cozy

EM, I know how much Drew loved Xenogears, so now that the news is out about how linear Xenosaga is, I figured it be a good topic for him to tackle. Is this a case of you've got your drama in my game, or is it that I've got my game in your drama? How much story is too much? Is less gameplay a bad thing in the RPG scene? And what about those hour-long story sequences? Take that, Drew. -Red Raven

Wow, Raven. You read my mind.

Closing Comments:

By now I'm sure all of you (okay, well, all those of you who give a damn) have read up on the GIA's impressions of Xenosaga, which seems to have chosen the one aspect of its predecessor that fans hate most -- the second CD -- and expanded upon the formula to fill a couple DVDs. How does that make you feel?

Tell Cozy -- because my shift is over.

- Erin Mehlos