Hey Drew,

I went on vacation after Milligan left, and now I come to bother you. Mwahaha, or something.

Actually, those "trippy designs" can be accessed by hitting select while the music is playing. Cool, huh? I dunno if its the same thing, but it's there, and it's trippy, so try it.

I'm done now. I'm going to go write some aimless drivel, or something. Buh-bye.

-The Professor, Columnist Extrordinaire, TotalRPG

Hey Drew,

Let me take a moment to hysterically laugh at the notion that a woman couldn't cut it as a villain... mwahahahahahahaha! Why this reaction, you ask? As a girl-gamer I know for a fact that women can be just as cruel as men; most women simply use different methods. Men go for physical violence, most serial killers and violent criminals being men. Women, however, use more cerebral forms of cruelty. Basically, guys beat each other up and girls trash each others reputations when they fight. (Note that these are just my observations. Anyone who chooses to give their personal opinion should be able to accept the possibility that they are wrong.) For example (in a video-game context), Sephiroth left a few big-ass explosions and a trail of corpses in his wake before trying to destroy the world with a giant meteor in order to restore his "mother", space-virus Jenova. Meanwhile, Miang (of Xenogears) was as mental and physical child-abuser as well as the secret co-ruler(with Krelian) of a floating city of Nazis(Solaris) and the implied instigator of more than one world-war. She tried to destroy civilization using latent genetic mutations in order to restore her "father", the biological weapon Deus. Both had similar goals but tried to realize them differently... and both were great villains. Here's hoping that Edea can live up to her evil Square heritage...

-Maharet

Dear guy who's my age but somehow has a much cooler job, I think women can be very scary, forget about how they get exponentially more intimidating with their beauty, just think about the Wicked Witch of the West. Man, that was one scary old bitch. I can state positively, I wouldn't have woken up in a cold sweat if The Wizard of Oz had The Wicked Warlock of the West as the villain.

-Everyone's future Lord Ruler and favorite guy

Dear sugarplum faerie,

Anyone who thinks Edea (or any other woman) can't be a good villain needs to watch that ol' Disney classic Sleeping Beauty. Besides looking rather like Edea, Maleficent also kicks butt all over the place. Kefka was foppish and insane, Sephiroth was pretty and insane, but Maleficent was graceful, regal, calculatingly sane and downright cruel. If Edea can still exude that sense of dangerous beauty through the veil of a dull English translation, she's gonna rock.

And lets not forget the million or so movies and video games with a villain/antagonist named "Mother" or "Mother Brain" (including Alien, Metroid, Phantasy Star, Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and that perennial bastion of creativity, Wild Arms).

Also, Serge's name IS pronounced Surge. At least, that's what the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. wants you to believe. Obey your thirst, fools.

Beautiful yet deadly,

-J. Parish

Hey Drew,

You know, I don't know what that Ryan guy was talking about yesterday. I think women make the best villians an any situation (more in real life than in video games). I mean think about it, women are so much more determined than men. Although it does take a little more to get them angry, once that happens they are lethal beasts foaming at the mouth, determined to vent their anger on anyone that stands in their path. This makes them way more ruthless than men. See, men are distracted easily, it's sad but true. They could be fighting to destroy the world one minute and then the next trying to get some action. When a woman wants something bad enough she goes and gets taking out anything in her path. See, so woman do make better villians than men. They're even worse (once again, more in real life than games) when they're attractive , because any male will feel bad about hurting her. They might even go so far as to try to get on her good side and do her bidding. Trust me, I've seen it happen. Few men have this power. This makes women the worst villians of all time. If there was a woman trying to fight I'd run away. That's all.

-Mark John(s)on

For Edea, I've compiled a list of requirements that she needs to fill before she would be considered a evil villian.

1) She must either dress like a clown, or in dark gothic clothes
2) She must want to kill the heros.
3) She must work for someone eviler than herself, then kill that person to become even more evil.
4) She must want to take control of the world.
5) She must want power.
6) She must do evil things just to make the heros angry.
7) She must make the heros chase her through boring dungeons and worthless side-quests.
8) She must be incredibly easy to beat in the final battle.
9) She must change into some weird demon or angel in the last battle.
10) She must be surprised when you beat her.
11) Last, but most importantly, she must have some kind of evil laugh(Kefka comes to mind).

These are the minimum requirements to be an evil villian. Just about every evil guy(or girl) should at least follow these eleven rules. Hope this helps. :)

-redknight1

Dear Drew, Master of all that is Holy for Good Gaming,

I write in response to this whole thing of women playing villains, i for one can say that women will and always will be better villains. I have this boss where i work named Rose. She is this old butt-ugly lady(i use this term "lady" as loosely as one can) that bitches at everything...nonstop. She is my REAL life villain. She really scares the shit out of me, and it's not very gratifying to know that your aftraid of a 57 year old woman with arthritis and an artificial hip. Don't get me wrong, i'd slap this lady the first chance i got, but still, i'd be afraid as to what she'd do back to me. Tell me Drew, why am i scared of such a person??

Back to my point, Yes, a female villain can be just as, if not more effective as a male villain.

Can women make effective villains? I say yes. Has anyone out there ever seen the old Japanese show Oniisama e (AKA Brother Dear Brother)? That show is a perfect example of just how chilling female characters can be, but since chances are you've never seen it, I guess I can't use that for comparison.

The type of female villain I personally think is the most effective and frightening is the cold, calculating, imperious, and vicious kind--someone who feels little or no emotion, save perhaps for pride or fury, and cares for nothing but whatever her goals are, but at the same time is very grand, almost queenly in her manner. In other words, I think the best kind of female villain is not the generic type that wants to take over/destroy the world just for the heck of it or just because she's evil, but instead is simply a ruthless woman with a heart of ice in pursuit of something (which could include taking over the world or becoming a goddess, but she'd have a *reason* for it). As for why there haven't been many memorable female villains, the few that are in games usually fall victim to severe and often sexist stereotyping.

I haven't played FF VIII yet, so I can't say much about Edea, but I have seen the intro movie. In it, she seems to be the imperious, cold type, so maybe she'll be a good villain.

-Rei no Miko

Well, that last letter of the column got me thinking about the whole direction of the gaming industry, but I don't want to bore you with all of that, so I'll just stick to the RPG aspect of it.

So far from what I've seen from upcoming games, making new and creative systems for RPGs and other games in general is what most companies are trying to do. I'm not saying that companies weren't implementing any new ideas before, I'm just saying that lately it seems to be becoming a big trend with games like FFVIII and Legend of Legaia. There's a bunch of other examples, I just can't remember them now.

So where does this lead the RPG industry? My guess is that later on all these new systems or even types of RPGs will be used more often by different companies and will become major pieces of the whole. Like with that upcoming Racing Lagoon game, it's a whole new type of RPG. If it's released and gets average or above in popularity, there's bound to be more "racing RPGs" made by companies other than Square.

Sooner or later this constant flow of new and creative ideas has to at least slow down, or the ideas just get lamer and lamer. The draw system in FFVIII, for example, I think is incredibly stupid and unimpressive. My prediction is going to be that the rest of the PSX's life span and maybe the beginning of the PSX2's will be used to get new ideas, and the rest of the PSX2's "era" will be spent reestablishing those older ideas. These are just my opinions for now and probably will change once I get a look at what the PSX2 will have in store for us.

-TheBeaver

Hiya drew!

After that letter yesterday about genres coming together, I was reminded of how many RPGs today "borrow" features from other genres.

Take Star Ocean: tSS for example. It's battle system is heavily action oriented, feeling more like a action game than a RPG sometimes. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. I mean, its certainly more engaging than most turn-based systems.

Other RPGs, such as FF7, and Xenogears, have tons of minigames. While some might consider these seperate from the main game, I see this as just another example of how genre lines are crossing.

In the end though, I don't care whether genres are merging. If a game is fun, I'm going to play it. ^_^

-Sugoi