Sometime last week I began seeing posts pop up on the Twitter with the hashtag #GameStruck4 with four games listed. After a bit of research a few days later (because work), I found out about the original "#FilmStruck4" asking people to define themselves by listing only four movies.
Now, being me, I tend to like lists, or at the very least, listing things that I like. So I thought this was a neat idea (do people still use "neat"?) to replace video games with movies and I quickly came up with the first three, then became stuck on the fourth. I'm not sure why that last one struck me as a difficult choice, but it wasn't until six days later (being today), that I decided upon the fourth and final game to include.
Now since this is a site where we like to hear the sound of our own keyboards, I felt a little bit of explanation would be in order rather than just putting up pictures on Twitter, but to give a bit of explanation as to the reasoning behind my personal choices.
Deciding upon Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III when I bought it on the SNES) was an easy and immediate choice. I have played through this game more times than probably any other game on any system. I have maxed out the game timer, I have gone through the last stage with everyone as Imps (because why not apparently), I have gone through the game renaming everyone as "FF I," "FF II", "FF III", and so on until I reached what I thought was the ridiculous sounding "FF XIV." As a graduation present from Jr. High, I had asked for the soundtrack which, to date, is easily one of my all time favorite video game soundtracks. There is just simply so much that I love about this game and anything that I may not have liked anytime during the last 24 years has either been forgotten or forgiven to the point of forgetfulness.
So much of how I view not only JRPGs, but nearly all RPGs is how I subsciousness compare it to nearly every aspect of Final Fantasy VI. How is the character development? How is the world constructed and its histories? Are the character motivations believable? Do I even care about the characters? How does the music fit with each character? Is there generic "sad" music or are themes tailored to specific characters during melancholic moments?
So much of how I view not only JRPGs, but nearly all RPGs is how I subsciousness compare it to nearly every aspect of Final Fantasy VI. How is the character development? How is the world constructed and its histories? Are the character motivations believable? Do I even care about the characters? How does the music fit with each character? Is there generic "sad" music or are themes tailored to specific characters during melancholic moments?
Another game that I am positive I have brought up in the past, I first played Final Fantasy Tactics sometime around 2000 while living with Dr. Potts et all in our collectively first apartment. This was my first foray into a non-numbered Final Fantasy game as well as my first tactics game so I was not quite sure what it was that I was expecting. What I definitely was not expecting was a complex and in depth story with themes that I had never experienced before in a video game. Maybe because I had recently gone through (as in a year and-a-half prior) my own conflicting thoughts about my own religiousness, but the events surrounding the Glabados Church and those affiliated with the church, as well as your character's roll in those events are what I love about this game. I have since become a sucker for the Final Fantasy Tactics semi-franchise, the world of Ivalice, and severely hope for another entry to be released on the Switch.
And speaking of character depth (as mentioned above in FF VI) and complexity. I love how Ramza is not the hero that history remembers, that his name is essentially wiped from history and is only known as a heretic for his eventual stance against the church. You play the main character in their own story, but not the story that the histories remember. That is something that I am drawn to, and it possibly started here.
And speaking of character depth (as mentioned above in FF VI) and complexity. I love how Ramza is not the hero that history remembers, that his name is essentially wiped from history and is only known as a heretic for his eventual stance against the church. You play the main character in their own story, but not the story that the histories remember. That is something that I am drawn to, and it possibly started here.
There is so much that I love about Eternal Darkness and only a little bit that I don't particularly like, but that has faded over time. Initially, I was not fond of the events that took place under the Rovias estate. I felt that the game had suddenly taken a science fiction turn that I was neither prepared for nor looking for. This was also before I was right before I was introduced to H.P. Lovecraft, so I was missing a lot in the way of homage. That being said, Eternal Darkness and their brilliant crafted sanity effects were things that Dr. Potts and I had been talking about to some extent for a number of years. I had always thought it would be interesting to have, during a boss fight, the boss pause the game in order to formulate their plan while the player watched on in horror.
This game does do so much right in the way that they handle horror, replayability, and even the challenge of the game does not seem to get in the way of the storytelling. And the voice acting! The Game Cube generation was probably the time when I became more accustomed to voice acting and the voice acting in this game (RIP William Hootkins) was beyond anything that I had experienced to that point.
This game does do so much right in the way that they handle horror, replayability, and even the challenge of the game does not seem to get in the way of the storytelling. And the voice acting! The Game Cube generation was probably the time when I became more accustomed to voice acting and the voice acting in this game (RIP William Hootkins) was beyond anything that I had experienced to that point.
There is so much that I love about Morrowind. The storytelling, the setting, the learning curve (getting killed by a bug can be pretty humbling), the lore, the music are all amazing here. I can recall the moment in the game where I felt everything click. Story-wise, there is a question as to whether or not you are the reincarnation of a beloved folk hero (very simplified explanation mind you), and it was not until over half way through the game that events and character traits fell into place. All of a sudden I felt that everything that I had been working towards made sense. My role in the story felt like it was of my own doing, not one that was scripted to happen, even though it was.
This was also the first game where I noticed that I favored traveling on foot rather than either using the fast traveling mechanic, or traveling on roads; granted I traveled as much off road as I could when I was going through The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a few months earlier, but this is when I recognized that it was something that I would rather not do. Being able to explore the land is something that I love to do to this day, currently with Breath of the Wild.
This was also the first game where I noticed that I favored traveling on foot rather than either using the fast traveling mechanic, or traveling on roads; granted I traveled as much off road as I could when I was going through The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a few months earlier, but this is when I recognized that it was something that I would rather not do. Being able to explore the land is something that I love to do to this day, currently with Breath of the Wild.
So those are my four video games that I feel do a decent job of defining who I am. Kind of. I could probably turn each of these entries into their own article, but I would rather not burden you all with a two week long project that I could sum up in a paragraph or two. The point is, when I thought about what four games might define me, these are the games that I thought of and I know that there are a great many more that I could have included (and you can read about them in the Games of the Year series I posted last year).
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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