Sigh.

As was pointed out to me yesterday, a letter posted yesterday supporting my mock-professional column from two days ago was indeed meant to be a joke. It was sarcasm. Ergo, I am a moron with a finely-tuned sense of humor on par with the live studio audience of a Full House reunion. Ack. I hate being wrong generally, but this was me missing the joke. That's not just annoying, it's outright depressing.

Speaking of which, that column that stirred up all the ire has been recovered at long last, after picking through my hard drive with a fine-toothed comb. Hooray! I am the man, yes? Those who really want to see me being dead serious, read everything except the ending bit. Those that want to see me bitch and swear, read only the closing comments.

Oh, and Ground Zero is the name of a web page devoted to Xenogears 2. It's not the real name for it. It does sound cool, though.

And now, without further ado, the very cool letter I got permission to post... right now!

This is an interesting letter, to me. I've had some very compelling letters written in to me before, encouraging me to be less caustic and more professional, from letter-writers I respect, like Clyde Hudman and Arpad Korossy. This one is different, in that it challenges my perception and definition of professionalism. So, on that point, I back down. My definition of professionalism is wrong. Professional does not mean being deadly boring. It does not have to mean being spineless and unwilling to take risks. It does, though, entail a basic respect for my readers and other people which, quite honestly, I lack.

Okay, it goes without saying that I do not want to be an all dumb humor column. It's an element of it, yes, and sometimes it's fun to just have a day of silliness, but I don't feel that it's gone overboard up to now. I hope. Flipping over the issue, I can't bring myself to do a totally serious column all the time, either. It excludes the desires of those who want something a bit lighter to read. Moreover, I enjoy doing the humor, and removing it would suck a lot of my enjoyment of the column away, and that would start to show in time.

So what is Double Agent? If one thing is a defining trait of this column, to my mind, it's my willingness to argue any topic. I'll post the really messy, controversial letters, and encourage fighting about it. At the end of the day, that's what I'm offering to those that read this column. It may not be professional, and I imagine there's room for a totally serious letters column out there, but if I need to pick a battle line to defend, it's this one. I am not, and will never try and make Double Agent like anything but Double Agent. It's a volatile, argumentative alternative. It's not a middle ground, it's not competing on the same level as anything, but it goes in a whole different direction. I don't know if it's professional or not, I can't guarantee that everyone will like it, but in the end, I've gotta invoke the old chesnut "To thine own self be true." And I'll have to trust that the best of what I am will capture the interest of future readers.

Okay, I admit it. Some of the items listed on the GIA Easter Eggs list are not really, by definition, Easter Eggs at all. Cadbury would be ashamed, I'm sure.

So, trying to make lemonade for a moment, anyone care contribute their favourite easter egg in one of our covered genres (RPGs, strategy games, puzzle games, rhythm)? If I get enough contributions, we can post up a massive, cool list of real Easter Eggs. How does that sound?

Hooray! Someone actually likes the color scheme! We argued this issue way back, deciding what sort of layout and color scheme we wanted for GIA, and our decision was to go with the manilla/white look. On one hand, it reflects the secret files/secret agent schtick. On the other, it's clear, uncomplicated, and easy on the eyes. We're tentatively planning to buff the site up over the summer, but despite my fondness for the color black, I'm in favor of keeping our current color scheme.

And Fei did show the real power of humans. The real power of smart humans is to be smart enough to use the giant robot to kick butt. :)

More seriously, the Xenogears is, to my recollection, a sort of manifestation of Fei's inner power. Sure, it exists without him, but it channels the power of humanity without outside interference, like the Omnigears do. In a sense, it is the power of humans. It's just being collected and channelled into the ultimate machine. Does that make any sense?

We cover PaRappa for three reasons. First off, it was initially billed as a puzzle game, which qualifies it for coverage. Second, it's part of a tiny little mini-genre, Rhythm games, which no other site covers specifically, so we adopted it, despite its dodgy adherence to our "intelligent" premise. And most of all, because we love PaRappa. And he loves us.

PaRappa is a fun, fun game, especially when you go at it freeform. There's a certain joy to completing each rap correctly, seeing PaRappa do the right action at the right time. I can't describe what makes it so addictive and so fun, really. In many ways, the gameplay is like Simon. It's like Simon would be like if it was cute as hell, original in style and motif, and had the most entertaining soundtrack in gaming. I've managed to addict many a non-gamer with the sweet sounds of PaRappa. They gotta believe. We all gotta believe. Play it for yourself, and you will too.

This was my view on Xenogears as well. Being an aetheist, I wouldn't have been offended either way, but I really feel it was generic and clearly fantastical enough to avoid anything close to being religiously offensive. I mean, it's a church, renamed the Ethos. You fight God, renamed Deus for these purposes. And in the end, the god the Ethos follows is a biological weapon from another planet. I can see getting offended to a point, but when you reach the point of establishing that you're seeing another planet with its biological weapon god, its applicability to real life gets tossed out the window.

Tactics is another story, which has much stronger parallels with some religious organizations, and sticks closer to them, instead of going off into the realm of sheer fantasy.

Frank Green asks if, as a Baptist, if he'd be offended by Xenogears. With one letter to the contrary (Arpad K., who has a letter printed above, was offended by it), and several supporting it, I say with a degree of confidence that no, you're unlikely to get offended. It's not set on Earth. It's a fantasy world with a fantasy religion.

Allan is fine. As is Agent. Whatever floats your boat.

I didn't hear from Aaron, so his definition of "epic fantasy" stays up in the air for now. Be that as it may, I do agree that books have a cachet, a way of conveying some ideas and feelings that other media cannot do nearly as effectively. You're quite right, in that a book always belongs to the reader, first and foremost.

I'm at a loss to name a game with a more epic scope than Xenogears. The sheer amount of change the entire world undergoes during the course of the game is miles more drastic than any other game I can name, and with a history which puts FF6 to shame, in my opinion. I have my gripes with the game, but scope isn't one of them.

Okay, clarification time: completely panning the Square release schedule isn't justified just yet. We will probably see announcements of future, late '99 or early 2000, releases at E3. Announcements that may involve US release for SaGa 2 and/or Legend of Mana. So don't lose all hope. Also, I have played Ehrgeiz, and it is Good. Obviously, if you hate fighting games, it's not going to do much for you, but it's a fun game.

That said, I can't say I'm jumping for joy at what we are getting. I've played Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon 2, and found it to be a dull, innovation-free dungeon crawl with obnoxiously cute character designs. The music is lousy. The control was clunky. So yeah, I'm disappointed to see it coming to the US at all, much less in lieu of games I do have hope for, like Front Mission 3.

Chocobo Racing is an ever more dubious proposition. Half an hour of play time later, I'm hard-pressed to claim it as being worth anything more than a rental. It's a game which has roundly received mediocre scores in Japanese gaming magazines, whose appeal is based primarily on the prospect of gamers buying a game on the basis of a cute mascot. The most glowing review I've read of CR said that it was "cute." It's a game that's mediocre at best, with a brand name slapped on.

Having "name" characters tossed into a game doesn't make it crap - Ehrgeiz proves that. But it's too often an indication of using a brand name to sell inferior product for a greater profit margin. And CMD2 and Chocobo Racing are, in my experience, proof of that. They're the Squaresoft equivalent of Acclaim movie license titles.

The Square EA release list isn't the end-all-be-all. There are games coming after them. And lord knows they passed on some serious stinkers (Another Mind). But when I can compare Square to Acclaim with a straight face, there's something very wrong.

Closing comments

Realistically, it's too early to pass full judgement on the Square EA release schedule as a whole. I'm probably going overboard. On the other hand, the release list, with the heavy emphasis on turning the Final Fantasy series and related characters into a US franchise, just waves red flags in front of my eyes. The fact that I've played, and disliked, two of said games makes it all the more frustrating and angering to me. Of course, you're welcome to disagree, and loudly. :)

Tomorrow, I'm almost certainly getting more letters chewing me out for my franchising and Square-related rantings. Also, we're a hair's breadth away from reopening the old "fantasy vs. sci-fi" debate in the "epic fantasy" conversation thread, so keep a head's up for that one. I know a bunch of you have been itching to unload your thoughts on that issue for a while now.

You know, I didn't even plan to be controversial and argumentative. The timing is a total coincidence. I'm just lucky, I guess. Heh.

- Double Agent