Okay, I blundered.

On the 28th, Brad Williams wrote in a letter which said that level-building was pretty dull, and compared it to a book. In a book, he reasoned, there's no way in hell you'd have the heroes wandering around for fifty pages fighting monsters to get stronger.

Where I goofed was in my response, where I completely missed the point, and ranted off on another topic entirely. It was worth it, if only to hear about the Lone Wolf books again, but I apologize to Brad for being a twit and not answering the letter he actually sent.

Anyhow, you're right, there's no way any book would work if it was paced like a video game RPG. Any book where characters "built levels" would be boring as hell, for one thing. For another, it'd be rightly lambasted for being long and tedious. For another, the internal logic and momentum would be lost - the world is in peril, and you run around and fight goblins? Logic and drama dictates that if the world's going to end, you go and save it ASAP. Of course, that's the advantage of video games. Time is essentially stopped in most games until you perform a task or enter a given place. You don't age. The Evil Master Plan comes no closer to fruition. A novel writer can't just ignore the passage of time and have a character run off for six years, training, without consequences. Time is a tool in novel-writing, a way to pace things and build tension and drama. It's a moot point in RPGs, generally, and that's part of why level-building works there.

I hope this answer serves the question better, Brad. And apologies for going off on the tangent in the first place.

The Lunar games are traditional in a lot of ways. 2D graphics, anime styled, squat character sprites that look outright ridiculous, the works. The battle system's a little better than most, adding the importance of movement into the equation, the music's quite excellent, but nothing that completely blows everything else out of the water. Lunar is a game whose strength is in the story and the characters, with very likeable heroes, battling a fantastic villain. Lunar is a game I enjoy on every level. I like exploring the nooks and crannies. I work through it like a madman to see the anime cutscenes. I want to see what happens next, but enjoy the journey. Lunar: Eternal Blue is my favourite RPG of all time. That's what I say about Lunar.

Now then, Working Designs is a company run by perfectionists. Sometimes, it pays off in spades, and you end up with some truly spectacular results (Dragon Force remains my favourite strategy/RPG of all time). They piss off lots of fans with their nasty habit of taking forever, and still more with their controversial translations. But they survive. Any company that survived, hell, was founded translating games for the Turbografx-16 is not going to be crushed by Atlus. Lunar: Eternal Blue is my favourite traditional RPG of all time, so from my deeply biased perspective, it's certainly worth the wait for Lunar, and look forward to being able to discuss it once more people have played the series. On the other hand, you've named some promising looking games, so I don't think you'd go wrong playing any of them. Your call.

Asellus does indeed have three endings, and Emelia has two, based on whether or not you got the PurpleEye in Baccarat.

Don't call me Al.

It was founded by myself, Brian "Slick" Glick, Brian "Found Dirk Diggler lacking" Maniscalco, Andrew "She said she was eighteen, I swear" Vestal, and Andrew "I need the animals to study their habits, that's my story, I'm sticking to it" Kaufmann, along with artist guy Jeremy "Will beat the crap out of me if I make up a sexual nickname for him" Parish, who had to decline full-time staff membership since he's a frighteningly busy guy.

We didn't steal anyone. None of the founders were running pages when we founded it. Fritz, Andrea and Tami joined as a result of a call for new staff members. People come to GIA, and actively strive to join us. We don't headhunt. We don't need to. It's very cool.

Not on the main page. The much-discussed Community section, whenever it launches, may include a fanfic section. Then again, the Community section doesn't exist yet, so discussing its features is sort of pointless.

In a manner of speaking. I'll leave it at that.

Fritz tells me that it's roughly 35-40 hours, on the inside.

Worst games for PSX? Bubsy 3D, Contra: Legacy of War, Cosmic Race, Criticom, Beyond the Beyond, Fantastic Four, Iron Man/X-O Manowar: Heavy Metal, and a special Oh God Did That Ever Suck award to Time Killers, an old fighting game that wasn't actually released for PSX, but sucked so much that I consider it an honorary crap game for all platforms.

That's only eight, including one that's not a PSX game, but damn, they're shitty enough for ten ordinary crap games.

No news on FF Tactics 2. And the only RPG to sell well enough to receive Greatest Hits status, to my knowledge, is FF7. Which seems exempt from the program, probably due to its 3 CD length.

As for save games, it's a matter of how much data is required, and how many variables need to be recorded in order to accounted for in order to recreate a save game status. Linear games and action games are the easiest- the save game contains customized controller options, the last place reached in the game, and some stats. The greater the number of variables, the more the save game need to keep track of - have you picked up the Elixir hidden in the chandelier? What shape did you make your room in Deception? The more you intereract and create, the more space is required.

All right, I'm tired of being pestered. GIA Chat is returning, kids and kittens. To avoid netsplit problems, and to give me home turf advantage, it's going to be held on IRC again. I tried doing an unofficial webchat-based thing a while ago, and it was a total disaster, so I'm gonna stick with IRC. The network of choice will be DalNet, see www.dal.net for connection details, and the channel is #thegia. #gia is taken and registered by people from Denmark or something, so please don't enter there. It will be held... Saturday at 8 PM EST. Any questions?

And man, that was a cheap shot at FF5. But hey, it's your funeral. :)

Okay, for the last time, I don't don't hate Crabbits. I don't like Crabbits. I am completely disinterested in them. I've used the word maybe twenty times, ever. Josh Reid, former letters guy at RPGamer, was the anti-crabbit fanatic. I don't give a shit. No more crabbit letters.

EB64 was a quintessential made-for-64DD project, and with its degeneration from a leading-edge peripheral to nigh-vaporware, EB64 has suffered horribly. To my knowledge, it's on indefinate hold at the moment, not actually scheduled for release at all. There's a lot of work done on it, so it may see the light of day yet (probably as a cart), but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Ouch. Though I've still not played the demo, I've been told by several people that the Shadow Madness demo does not bode well foe the game at all. Which is a shame, really. It'd be a wonderful change of pace to see US developers develop a successful console RPG. Sigh.

Still, Jade Cocoon looks damned nice, and I'm very stoked for that. The one thing that everyone comments about in Shadow Madness is that the dialogue is excellent. I can think of no higher recommendation for a translation team.

Closing comments

"Allan, if you really loved me, you'd buy me that gold necklace. It'd look great on me, you know. We could try it on... together."

"Sure. Gold necklace. No problem. Just let me get my magnum and my ski mask, and we're all set."

The preceding has been an excerpt from my life. I don't know why I felt compelled to mention it. I just did. Night, everyone.

- Allan Milligan