Platypus of Truth

A quick doodle in honor of our school's favorite invasive species.

Something I forgot to mention in my prior post : Final Fantasy II is an open world. Once the party gains Minwu's canoe, it can reach just about any area on the map with enough effort. Paid travel via Cid's airship or Leila's pirate vessel make travel even easier as the game moves on. The only restriction on the character's travels is their ability to survive the increasingly difficult monsters that wait only a little ways off the beaten path. As the heroes begin as a trio of nobodies, this creates another in-world reason for the characters to restrict their actions to certain areas of the map. The bottom line of this is that it gives the game the feel of a real world in which you are free to travel from A to B but must suffer the consequences if you try. While this hides a good deal of rail-roading, it does so in a way that makes it easier to suspend disbelief and by in to the story the game is telling. That suspension of disbelief is key to creating the sense of wond...

I remember when SquareSoft's (now SquareEnix) original Final Fantasy came out. It was a turning point in the evolution of the game industry and it took my young imagination by storm. What I didn't know at the time was that there were a host of other titles in the series already in the works. What we Americans would know as Final Fantasy II would actually be the fourth title in the franchise. After Square made the switch from Nintendo to Playstation, they began releasing these other titles for the American market. I had other things to do while that was happening, so it's only just now that I've gotten around to playing Final Fantasy II and experiencing the adventures of Firion and his friends. Final Fantasy II makes a number of ground-breaking improvements over the original title. There are defined player characters with their own rudimentary stories and personalities. Some of these characters come and go, as in Final Fantasy IV, but the number of them that meet a gri...

Quick marker doodle of a soldier from Virgil's Aeneid. I did a little research on Etruscan armor in an attempt at verisimilitude. The shield is too small, but I like the roughness and slight awkward angle of the spear. It gives it a little more of an "authentic" feel. ...and that's so much of Virgil: modern, apartment-dwelling, fast-food-eating Roman tries to imagine life over 1,000 years ago in a way his urbane audience will buy.