Once upon a time, I come across a page that stuns me. I read through it. I gape. I glare. I am left aghast and agog. I marvel and curse the fact that I have not seen or visited this page before. I curse all the friends who have never pointed it out to me before.

Seanbaby's homepage is one such page.

This page contains glowing reviews of both River City Ransom and Super Dodgeball. It mercilessly mocks the Mega Man villain names. It gives out awards for excellence in NES games which nearly caused my rib cage to collapse from laughter. He makes fun of stupid people. He mocks the KKK. He's got quotes from Mr. T and the T-Force comic. And dammit, he even has a Superfriends section. Go. Go now.

Okay, that's all for now.

On the basis of this letter, I think it's time we all set aside a few dollars each months and started the Get Brian Glick a Life Foundation. Mail all submissions to the following address. Use small bills and blank checks only, please. With your help, Brian may one day someday have something better to do with his time than make exact counts of how much facial hair fictional characters have.

There you go.

Voice acting "done right" is a deceptively simple order. I mean, it's easy to look at Resident Evil and say "yep, that voice acting sucks sour frog ass." What boggles my mind is that the acting sounds worse than someone they just picked off the street, and forced to speak the lines in question, so I conclude that they must be prompting and directing their actors to belt the lines out like that. Maybe, got knows why, Capcom likes their voice acting to sound like that. Maybe they think it's funny. Maybe they just don't care. Be that as it may, voice acting tends to polarize opinions on how appropriate and effective a given voice is for the part, and is apparently hard to do, given the mountains of bad dubs kicking around. It's all well and good to say "it should be better", but the fact of the matter is, that's like saying "all games should have graphics as good as <insert graphically dazzling game here>." It's potentially feasible, and it'd be cool, but it's not gonna happen. If it was as easy as Konami makes it look, every company would have great voice acting.

Plus, hell, many RPG translations aren't even spellchecked. Do you trust a company that invented the language of Daravonese to find and hire top-quality voice actors for their games? Do they display the drive and desire for perfection that'd be required to make the exercise worthwhile? I'd rather have flawed text that I can scroll past quickly than shitty voice acting I have to plug my ears for.

PCM is audio that's created through the PSX's built-in sound chip. If you use it well, it can sound very excellent indeed - Suikoden springs to mind, as does FFT. Redbook audio is spooling audio directly to the CD like any other song. Games with redbook audio can be listened to like a normal CD - the Ys games for TG-16 were like this. What many games do is have recorded "live" (though often synthesized) music recorded in redbook format initially, but then compress it, which is why it doesn't show up when you try to play it on a CD player, and also take up less room.

Why doesn't everyone use Redbook? Because it chews up space. PCM takes up, relatively, a piddly amount of space on the CD, leaving room for FMV, game, or just more music. Compressed music is the middle ground, giving more versatility to the music (you can have vocals, for example, which isn't possible with PCM), but don't take up space as much as redbook does.

Well, I don't think there's reason for panic quite yet. The PSX has, I estimate, about a year of life left in it. It won't be getting the absolute cream of the crop past this Christmas, but it'll be a viable platform for a good while longer. As for whether to buy a DC, that's a tough one. I mean, if push comes to shove, there's probably oodles of PSX games you haven't played and kick ass muchly. Also, it remains to be seen where the bulk of developer attention will be focused during the next two years. If the DC gets bulked-up support and high sales, pick one up. If not, bide your time, and assuming the PS2 is launched well, go for that, since the tech geek in all developers will latch onto that sucker and never let go.

As for preferring Brave Fencer to Zelda: TOOT (god, I love that acronym), well, it's a personal choice issue. I think you're okay so long as you don't boast that BFM had better graphics than Zelda. Style, music, gameplay, anything else is debatable, but Zelda pulled off its graphical style with much panache and skill. Can't mess with that.

A logical step, yes. There's sort of a big stumbling block there, however. Namely, the death of linear plotting. In a game where you truly have choice, where you really can say "To hell with this stupid thing, I'm not drinking YOUR GODDAMN TEA YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF GOAT VOMIT!", linearity goes out the window. If you don't drink the spiked tea, you don't get knocked out, and a dozen effects down the road, you could end up with a dramatically different storyline.

Herein lies the difficulty in non-linearity, and why console RPGs can't boast the diversity and freedom of a "real" RPG. Namely, the difficulty of creating freedom. In a sit-down game of Vampire, for example, you can try and do almost anything. Literally. You can stand atop the Great Wall of China and sing showtunes if you feel like it, and your GM allows it. In an RPG, the rules are constrained by the capabilities of what's programmed, and there's a limit there. In a truly nonlinear, free scenario game, the number of potential events and reactions required to make a proper game world would be massive. Programming a linear plotline with character development and cutscenes would be nigh-impossible, because the odds of a player meeting with the circumstances required to trigger it would be minimal.

Unless games can start developing dialogue and events on the fly like a human can, real roleplaying seems to be a pipe dream in the console world.

Well, sort of. They're technically Desperation Attacks, as in FF6, but everyone calls them Limits. There is only one per character, and how they work varies according to the individual character, and there's variation within the attack itself, too. There aren't proper levels like in FF7, however.

If you want more detail, on an individual basis, we'll do a spoiler-marked description tomorrow.

Finally, I get an excuse to talk about DQ. Sheesh. The irony is that I only prompted this thread by bashing DQV. ;)

Anyhow, my favourite DQ is Dragon Quest IV. Gameplay-wise, both III and VI beat it out, hands-down. But a mix of nostalgia and appreciation for innovation are what appeal to me most. The chapter style of play, taking control of one group of characters at a time, was (as far as I know) totally unique at the time, and a good way of developing a feel and affection for the characters before they get lost in the massive party you assemble by the end. It's also a big, thick world with lots to see and do, the very cool Casino to always lose money at, and on a purely personal note, I just love playing as Taloon. I love the buying and selling, building up my shop to massive size and huge selection. Doesn't do me any good, but it's satisfying nonetheless.

I have played the DQ3 remix, and I second the recommendation. It's a fantastic game, with the best graphics of the series thus far, very cute animations on the slimes especially, and the gameplay is perfectly balanced. I felt that DQ3 dragged a bit in spots, due to excessive difficulty, and the need to build many levels to overcome that, but the remix wipes out the problems. All things considered, I'd probably say that DQ3 is the best of the series, objectively. I just don't have that deep-down-snuggly attachment to it that I have to DQIV and Taloon.

Okay, DQ fans. Join in the fun or I'll force you all to hint down Metal Babbles with a club. What's your fave DQ, what do you want from the series next, and what makes you love the series?

Closing comments

Quieter day than I expected, to be quite honest. Which is fine by me, since I had an interview to complete, submissions to polish, and I hurt my hand very badly yesterday, and it hurts like hell, which has slowed my typing to a crawl. Muy annoying. Still, everything's im place now, so don't hold back. Let's see what you've got to say. Gimme a call at 1-800-LACTOSE.

Oh, and in response to repeated inquiries, I will say the following: the GIA is looking very, very seriously into putting together an RPG community section of the page. Yes, including message boards. Be patient. It's in the works. We're on the case.

- The Double Agent