Skip to main content

Steampunk Platypus

No, I haven't built a world-destroying mech powered by a mysterious orb.  Alas...  However, imagining a society in the throws of the Industrial Revolution that has also discovered magic is what Final Fantasy III (Japan VI) is all about.

Final Fantasy III was developed by Squaresoft (now SquareEnix) as part of their hugely successful Final Fantasy Series.  In fact, I believe Final Fantasy XIII is just now coming out.  At the same time Final Fantasy III was in development, Squaresoft was also working on its hugely popular Chrono Trigger.  While the Final Fantasty series continued from one epic success to another, however, the Chrono Trigger series spluttered and died.  In fact, the re-release of the original game for the DS has largely been responsible largely for driving up the price of used copies of the orginal SNES release, rather than urging SquareEnix to create a sequel (which is what fans had hoped).  Why the two series took the paths they did is an interesting question since the two games are visually and game-play-wise quite alike ( the main differences being Chrono Trigger's move away from the static battle stage of the Final Fantasy Series and its slightly more sophisticated renderings of the characters so that Akira Toriyama's art design could have its full effect).  The main question, then, seems to be why did one series flourish while the other floundered.

There are probably multiple bureaucratic answers for that having to do with logistical and legal realities and the political innerworkings of Square.  On a story level, however, it seems that the sweeping, open, and sometimes amorphous structure of the Final Fantasy games allows for an infinite number of sequels that are all only loosely connected.  Chrono Trigger, on the other hand, with its tight characterization and narrow scope lends itself to being a one shot.  Put another way, for a game to be considered a true "Final Fantasy" it must simply incorporate a few key elements, the rest is left up to the whimsy of the creators, while to be a true Chrono Trigger sequel a game must successfully extend the story of Chrono and his companions in a compelling way.  To Sum up: Final Fantasy games, in their structure, lend themselves to sequels while Chrono Trigger is set up as a stand-alone.

I'm ok with that.  Ultimately, Chrono Trigger is a reminder that each of us have our own little stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The Final Fantasy series, on the other hand, reminds us that while our little stories soon come to an end, The Story, like The Road, continues on.  Those are both truths that we need to be reminded of from time to time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

Tolkien's Dark Tower: The Platypus Reads Part CLXXXVI

Tom Shippey points out in his Road to Middle Earth that the germ of Barad Dur, Sauron's Stronghold, comes from a scrap of Chaucer where the poet makes an offhand reference to a knight and his approach to "the dark tower."  Chaucer expected that everyone knew that story, but somehow in the intervening centuries it has become lost.  Using his imagination, Tolkien tried to delve back into the mine of story and imagine what this Dark Tower might have been.  We see several tries at this image, or several "accounts" in Tolkien's corpus.  The first is Thangorodrim, Morgoth's "dark tower," where he sits "on hate enthroned."  The second, and like unto it, is Sauron's original keep at Tol Sirion.  This is the dark tower before which Luthien, in all her frailty, stands and lays the deepest pits bare with her song (an image oddly reminiscent of protestant poets like Spenser, Bunyan, and Wesley).  Building on these two images, Tolkien constru...
4 comments
Read more

Platypus Past: Bachelor Cooking

Having been married for several years now, I can begin looking on my bachelor past with an "outsiders" perspective. One of the interesting things I've noticed while being married is the different approach my wife and I have to cooking. My wife actually learned How To Cook is quite good at it. Give her a recipe and she can make just about anything. I had to pick up bits and pieces as I went along. I call my style of cooking "bachelor cooking," and the first rule is that there are no recipes. The main goal of the bachelor cook is to get filling food on the table quickly and in a way that elevates him above the mere ramen-and-t-bell-forever caveman. This goal often has to be achieved in the context of a communal environment with other bachelors where what food is available at any given time may vary widely. This means that formal recipes are out. Instead, the bachelor cook needs to adopt a more open and creative approach to food. A bachelor cook sees a mea...
5 comments
Read more