Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Don't say I didn't warn you. :)

Well, my hand is better, I've finished Lunar, and now I'm back to field a wide array of hateful, spiteful letters from people who'd like to see me dead and buried under a mountain of salt and mucus.

I had a remarkable experience, playing Lunar this weekend. See, I love Lunar. Always have. But I'd almost forgotten that, in the midst of shipping delays, and more shipping delays, and... well, you get the idea. It's sort of the letter columnist's curse - you spend so much time arguing about video games, analyzing them, playing them for work, that you lose any capability to really enjoy them. Every opinion you posit about anything is scrutinized, disputed, debated, pissed upon, and mocked. It comes with the territory, but after a while, it does get draining. I'd already picked apart every aspect of Lunar before I got my hands on it, and there seemed to be little room for it enchant me, like Lunar: Eternal Blue did way back when. It would be just another game, more fodder, another game to say "that's your opinion, and I respect it" about. Another game I can't enjoy.

Well, Lunar broke this trend. Sure, it was short as all hell - 23 hours on my clock. But y'know what? I really loved it anyway. I sweated through a few boss battles. I had to actually run from enemies in some dungeons. I used items extensively, in and out of battle, instead of just relying on magic like I've done in the FF games, Wild Arms, Suikoden, and most other RPGs I've played. I laughed at Kyle, reminded myself that Jessica was just a video game character, marvelled that Alex actually had a decent amount of dialogue, and wished that Nash had more lines. I'm going to, get this, play Lunar *again*. I might even play it a third time once I buy the official guide book.

This is why I love Lunar so much. It's not the best, most innovative game ever made. But it pulled me out of a massive chasm of cynicism about gaming, simply by being fun. Simple and wonderful as that.

And now, we return you to your regularly-scheduled bile.

I'll take your word for it, but having been sent some choice voice samples from the game, I have no doubt that you're dead right on that count. Actually, on reflection, I'm hard-pressed to name a game with worse voice acting than Star Ocean 2. It makes Resident Evil sound like it was voiced by Lawrence Olivier, Bogie, Orson Welles, and Ingrid Bergman, brought back to life just for the occasion.

You almost had me agreeing with you until you invoked the name of Chu-Chu. Way to deflate an argument, Skuld. Heh.

Ahem. As for the depth argument, I think a key complaint about Xenogears is not that it had all this depth, but rather how it was presented. Namely, as opposed to having the option to search around, discover all these aspects of the characters and their world and the background thereof, it was rammed down our throats in very, very long dialogue sequences with no control of text speed. That, I think, is Xenogears' biggest flaw - it's a massive wad of information and ideas, and you have to deal with it all through dialogue sequences that cannot be avoided. If some elements of the plot were left open for the player to explore or not explore, depending on their wishes, I suspect the package would have gone over a lot better.

Try it. Just come and try it. We'll see how sharp you are, you bastard.

I sense a degree of bitterness here. Totally justified bitterness, but bitterness.

Depends on what kind of RPG you're shooting for. The problem with customization is that it tends to require a lot of save game space, something that most console systems are desperately short on. There are some games with a lot of capacity to tweak certain aspects of the character, like Star Ocean 2 and its Private Actions System, but if it's true customization, a better option is to shoot for the PC arena.

PCs have a long history of having very, very customizable titles of all genres, and RPGs are no exception. Online games like Ultima Online and Everquest are the best examples, offering a huge wealth of options to individualize characters, and that's the tip of the iceberg. But console systems have a lot less capability for customization. There's just not enough memory to get really complex, at this point at least.

Nintendo must die!

Well, in this letter, I have a lot to talk about. Let's get started shall we? Nintendo must die. 3 words, nothing more simplistic and even the little friggin period at the end, not an exclamation mark, just a period, it adds to the effectiveness. These lazy cheap fucks have done nothing to fix the glitch in SMB Dlx. I sent a long ass email bitching about it, to which I was replied a bunch of bullshit "I'm sorry"s and advertisements. They should've recalled it, and now they're getting too cheap to have plastic cases anymore for the GB games. So, anyways, I sent my game in, had it "fixed" and upon it's return had a message on my answering machine explaining that I have to do a trick in order to work my way around the glitch. So, without hesitation (and making sure that only one of the medals were achieved instead of all two before sending it in), I began to work on getting the other medal for which the glitch inhibits getting. (if you can understand that I praise you) What to my suprise should appear but the fact that the other medal did not show up. I'm going to find the person who let this glitch slip by, hang him by his feet from a stoplight low enough so that every car that passes underneath it nails him and sends him flying like a punching bag only to either be returned in a pendulum fashion or eventually wrapped around the light itself. I have to say it once again. Nintendo must die. Not even for that, but the quality of games that they themselves have put out have not met the standards of their reputation. I mean in the days of the SNES, their games redefined console gaming, and now they just seem to be comfortable settling for what they got. Of course, I have to bitch about Smash Bros because of how much they could've done but didn't care about doing, even if it is a kids game. On a lighter note. Star Ocean and Lunar kick ass. Although, now with these games, (also having bought Cocker's Pocket Pool for GBC). I have yet again too many games to beat. I do have to say about Lunar though is that the cut scenes where they introduce the characters IRRITATE THE HELL OUT OF ME!!! Why the hell can we not bypass these with the start button? I don't give Rattrap's skidplate what the hell they have to say, I just want them to SHUT the HELL UP. Everytime I see one, I want to stick red hot needles in my eyes, make the water boil, and my eyeballs explode. *sigh* Ok, I think that's enough bitching. Viento "I hope you choke and die on a jagged rock" 9598 PS Nintendo must die.

Again, I sense some negativity.

I'm leaving the Nintendo one be, since I haven't bought a Nintendo game in a few years, and therefore can't speak on that topic. As for the Lunar cutscenes, I think you're out of your mind. Sure, it'd be nice to have the option to skip them, but hell, they're well-animated little vignettes that capture more personality in a few seconds than the entire cast of Brave Fencer Musashi put together. If you don't want to play games where characters talk, go play Tekken or something. RPGs have characters in them. Characters talk. It goes with the territory. Amazing, huh?

That's might good. For an encore, your new words for the day are as follows: futon, gazebo, Dadaism, and ecclesiastical. Define, and relate them to a discussion of why Star Ocean 2's voice acting is a mound of petrified mule shit.

Bonus question: was the above a simile or a metaphor?

Sandman: A Game of You is a graphic novel published by DC Comics, written by Neil Gaiman, and illustrated by several artists including Colleen Doran, Mike Dringenberg, and someone else who name escapes me. Most larger bookstores now have a graphic novel section. Alternately, a quick search of the phone book should locate a local comic book specialty shop, which will almost certainly have a copy available.

I second the recommendation, by the by. The Sandman series is almost universally clever, well-written dark fantasy of the highest order, and well worth picking up for anyone that likes the genre. Yes, even if you normally hate comics.

Ted W., after the disbanding of the Redmond offices of Squaresoft, was a founding member of the Craveyard development team, and worked on the story for Shadow Madness. With Craveyard now disbanded, I'm uncertain of what he's up to. And while I've certainly ragged on his translations in the past, time has raised my appreciation for them. They're not as polished as the stuff we get from Atlus or Working Designs, but there's a lot of spirit to them. And I appreciate that, in retrospect.

NPC is a hold-over term from pen and paper role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, or Tribe 8. It stands for Non-Player Character, as opposed to characters controlled by players, Player Characters, or PCs. NPCs are, in essence, any character that is controlled by someone other than the players - the computer or system in a console RPG, the gamemaster in a live action game.

For the record, characters like Agrias, Cid, and Cloud cease to be proper NPCs once their join your party and are controllable in combat.

As requested, I forwarded Artoo 2 all the angry letters I was sent regarding the Square explanation for why FFIV was left out of the Final Fantasy Anthology.

All thirty-seven of them.

Judging by message board threads, Usenet discussion, and letters I've received, Square's explanation did not go over terribly well. The vast bulk of people I've seen are indeed still pissed off that they're being denied FFIV.

Closing Comments

Okay, that's enough bile for one day. I'm going to sit back and try and purge the negativity around me.

- Allan Milligan