We Will Go Where Our Dreams Come True.
I invited people on Tumblr to ask me questions about videogames; here are my answers!
As these answers were originally written for an audience that didn't necessarily read my Dreamwidth, I may repeat some sentiments I've already expressed here.
Questions from
th_esaurus:
Hardest game you’ve played?
Probably Celeste! It was worth the struggle. I crawled through the main storyline, inch by inch, with ferocious determination, and then I replayed it three times afterwards because I was so delighted to see how much I'd improved.
A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?
This is a tricky one! On one level, I want to say Final Fantasy VIII. On another, I absolutely don't, because I'm far too emotionally invested in Final Fantasy VIII and I'd be so sad if the voices didn't feel right.
Oh, wait, I know the answer! Umineko: When They Cry. A while ago there was talk of Umineko Gold, a project to give Umineko full English voice acting, which is obviously impossibly ambitious; it's well over a million words long. The project's gone quiet, but I still hope it comes through somehow, because I want to hear Battler sobbing and hyperventilating as everyone around him gets murdered, please.
What game do you never tell people you play?
I, er.
I fall back into actively playing Neopets every few years.
Now that Flash is no longer supported and large portions of the site are unusable, I may have escaped for good, but who knows?
Questions from
simplecoffee:
A popular series/game you just can’t get into no matter how much you try?
I really tried to get into Bioware RPGs. I tried Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Inquisition. I just slide straight off them. I tend to struggle with games where the main character doesn't have a defined personality, so games where you create your own character and choose all their dialogue options don't generally click for me.
(Special addition for Livejournal/Dreamwidth: I feel bad about this because a kind anonymous person who largely shares my tastes once recommended the Dragon Age games to me on here! Anonymous person, I don't know whether you still read this journal, but I still appreciate the recommendation, even if the games didn't click.)
That said, there are some cases, such as Life Is Strange, Oxenfree and Persona 5, where you choose most or all of the protagonist's responses, but the protagonist still feels like an established character with enough of a personality for me to latch on to.
Best soundtrack?
An impossible question! Some of my favourite game soundtracks include Okami, Night in the Woods, Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV and Bravely Default. I also have to give a special mention to NieR and Chrono Cross, which have soundtracks I love despite never having played the actual game.
Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?
I've dressed up as Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII a few times in a thrown-together outfit (I cut the trim off a Father Christmas hat for the fur trim on his jacket); I wouldn't mind having a more accurate version! I also think Rinoa Heartilly's outfit is very cute, although I don't know if I'd be able to wear it because I'm weird about having my limbs exposed.
I'm a very unadventurous dresser, so it's hard to think of a videogame character's outfit I'd actually wear on a day-to-day basis. Elena Fisher? I'd be willing to wear most of Elena's outfits. Uncharted characters in general tend to wear plain shirts and jeans; I'm up for that.
Which is more important, gameplay or story?
I'm going to move the cursor down to the hidden third option: it's characters!
Of the two, I tend to favour story, and I love a lot of games more on the strength of their story and characters than because of their gameplay. That said, there are games I've hugely enjoyed despite a complete lack of story; Baba Is You comes to mind. It's also really frustrating when you like a game's story and characters but hate the actual gameplay; this was a problem for me with Zanki Zero: Last Beginning.
Questions from
runicmagitek:
Best game you’ve ever played?
This is a tricky one! I can talk all day about the games I love, but they're often not objectively the best games. Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XIII and Zero Time Dilemma, for example, are widely agreed to be a bit of a mess, and yet I love them dearly.
With the criteria 'good story, good gameplay, achieves what it sets out to do and does it very well' on top of 'I really enjoyed it', the best game I've played might be Celeste, Portal II, Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last of Us.
A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet?
I was itching with excitement for Final Fantasy XV; I thought it looked cool even back when it was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and then the marketing increasingly started going 'this is a game about FRIENDSHIP' and I went 'yes!! I want a game about friendship!' I was looking forward to this game for a solid eight years before it was finally released.
It lived up to my hopes! The plot's a disaster, of course, and I can understand why the game wasn't what everyone wanted, but it was exactly what I needed to play. It's an absolute mess, but it's got a lot of heart and it slammed straight into mine. I love these stupid boys.
I wish they'd hug, though.
Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?
The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, where I had to pause and dry my face because I was crying so hard I couldn't see the DS screen.
The final chapter of Ghost Trick on a replay, after which I saw myself in a mirror, went 'wait, why are there bits of tissue all over my face?' and then remembered I'd spent the last twenty minutes mopping up my tears.
The ending of Final Fantasy XV; I wasn't prepared to see my photographs from our adventures next to the credits!
The ending of Umineko: When They Cry, one of the strangest, most intense and most beautiful stories I've ever experienced, after which I couldn't listen to 'Ricordando il passato' without feeling like someone had punched me in the lungs.
The ending of Life Is Strange 2 (I got the 'Redemption' end), where I started sobbing so suddenly and uncontrollably after the timeskip that the cat was staring at me in alarm.
The dance flashback in The Last of Us, Part II, which I'd seen before multiple times in the trailer; I just couldn't handle suddenly seeing it again in the context of everything that came afterwards.
It's been a long time, but I have a strong suspicion I also cried the first time I saw the ending of Final Fantasy X.
Questions from
keltena:
Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?
ALL OF THEM.
In particular, I'd like to see more Final Fantasy XIII crossovers. 'You've all got a clock counting down on your lives, and you have to work out what a god wants you to do, because achieving your mutual goal is bad but failing is worse' is a great way to introduce characters to each other and force them to work together. It could be interesting to see the 13 Sentinels or Persona 4 or Danganronpa characters dealing with that.
Also, while writing that, I had the terrible realisation that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has a large enough cast of teenagers for a Danganronpa game. 13 Sentinels/Danganronpa? I'd read it.
A game you wish your friends knew about?
If I could wave a magic wand and make everyone I know want to play a particular game, it'd probably be Umineko: When They Cry, appropriately enough. I love it so much, it had such an impact on me, but it's a bit of an acquired taste and requires a substantial investment of both time and money, so it's tricky to go around recommending it.
On the more accessible front, Exit/Corners is an in-browser mystery visual novel in the vein of Zero Escape or Your Turn to Die, and it's so high-quality I'm astonished that it's free. It has a grand total of nine fics on AO3, and I feel it deserves a larger fandom! The writing is strong, the plot is entertainingly twisty, Ink is a great protagonist, and it includes the most fleshed-out female character over seventy I've ever seen in a work of fiction.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of a videogame that's not nearly as widely known as it should be. If 'traumatised, time-travelling, occasionally amnesiac teenage mech pilots fighting a war they probably can't win' is a concept that appeals to you, pick it up immediately.
Finally (we're still on
keltena's questions):
If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?
A lot of my favourite games would be too dangerous to visit personally, I think! Or I love them on the basis of their characters, and I'd never actually manage to have a conversation with those characters if I spent a day there. Final Fantasy VIII? Good luck talking to Squall Leonhart. Final Fantasy X? Yuna would absolutely talk to me if I approached her, but she's a very private person, so it'd never get beyond surface-level polite conversation about the weather.
Fortunately, I have the perfect answer to this question! I would go to the Pokémon world and admire all the Pokémon and maybe cuddle a Bulbasaur if I'm lucky.
If you have any videogame-related questions of your own, feel free to ask in the comments! It may surprise you to learn this, but I like to talk about videogames.
As these answers were originally written for an audience that didn't necessarily read my Dreamwidth, I may repeat some sentiments I've already expressed here.
Questions from
th_esaurus:
Hardest game you’ve played?
Probably Celeste! It was worth the struggle. I crawled through the main storyline, inch by inch, with ferocious determination, and then I replayed it three times afterwards because I was so delighted to see how much I'd improved.
A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?
This is a tricky one! On one level, I want to say Final Fantasy VIII. On another, I absolutely don't, because I'm far too emotionally invested in Final Fantasy VIII and I'd be so sad if the voices didn't feel right.
Oh, wait, I know the answer! Umineko: When They Cry. A while ago there was talk of Umineko Gold, a project to give Umineko full English voice acting, which is obviously impossibly ambitious; it's well over a million words long. The project's gone quiet, but I still hope it comes through somehow, because I want to hear Battler sobbing and hyperventilating as everyone around him gets murdered, please.
What game do you never tell people you play?
I, er.
I fall back into actively playing Neopets every few years.
Now that Flash is no longer supported and large portions of the site are unusable, I may have escaped for good, but who knows?
Questions from
simplecoffee:
A popular series/game you just can’t get into no matter how much you try?
I really tried to get into Bioware RPGs. I tried Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Inquisition. I just slide straight off them. I tend to struggle with games where the main character doesn't have a defined personality, so games where you create your own character and choose all their dialogue options don't generally click for me.
(Special addition for Livejournal/Dreamwidth: I feel bad about this because a kind anonymous person who largely shares my tastes once recommended the Dragon Age games to me on here! Anonymous person, I don't know whether you still read this journal, but I still appreciate the recommendation, even if the games didn't click.)
That said, there are some cases, such as Life Is Strange, Oxenfree and Persona 5, where you choose most or all of the protagonist's responses, but the protagonist still feels like an established character with enough of a personality for me to latch on to.
Best soundtrack?
An impossible question! Some of my favourite game soundtracks include Okami, Night in the Woods, Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV and Bravely Default. I also have to give a special mention to NieR and Chrono Cross, which have soundtracks I love despite never having played the actual game.
Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?
I've dressed up as Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII a few times in a thrown-together outfit (I cut the trim off a Father Christmas hat for the fur trim on his jacket); I wouldn't mind having a more accurate version! I also think Rinoa Heartilly's outfit is very cute, although I don't know if I'd be able to wear it because I'm weird about having my limbs exposed.
I'm a very unadventurous dresser, so it's hard to think of a videogame character's outfit I'd actually wear on a day-to-day basis. Elena Fisher? I'd be willing to wear most of Elena's outfits. Uncharted characters in general tend to wear plain shirts and jeans; I'm up for that.
Which is more important, gameplay or story?
I'm going to move the cursor down to the hidden third option: it's characters!
Of the two, I tend to favour story, and I love a lot of games more on the strength of their story and characters than because of their gameplay. That said, there are games I've hugely enjoyed despite a complete lack of story; Baba Is You comes to mind. It's also really frustrating when you like a game's story and characters but hate the actual gameplay; this was a problem for me with Zanki Zero: Last Beginning.
Questions from
runicmagitek:
Best game you’ve ever played?
This is a tricky one! I can talk all day about the games I love, but they're often not objectively the best games. Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XIII and Zero Time Dilemma, for example, are widely agreed to be a bit of a mess, and yet I love them dearly.
With the criteria 'good story, good gameplay, achieves what it sets out to do and does it very well' on top of 'I really enjoyed it', the best game I've played might be Celeste, Portal II, Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last of Us.
A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet?
I was itching with excitement for Final Fantasy XV; I thought it looked cool even back when it was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and then the marketing increasingly started going 'this is a game about FRIENDSHIP' and I went 'yes!! I want a game about friendship!' I was looking forward to this game for a solid eight years before it was finally released.
It lived up to my hopes! The plot's a disaster, of course, and I can understand why the game wasn't what everyone wanted, but it was exactly what I needed to play. It's an absolute mess, but it's got a lot of heart and it slammed straight into mine. I love these stupid boys.
I wish they'd hug, though.
Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?
The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, where I had to pause and dry my face because I was crying so hard I couldn't see the DS screen.
The final chapter of Ghost Trick on a replay, after which I saw myself in a mirror, went 'wait, why are there bits of tissue all over my face?' and then remembered I'd spent the last twenty minutes mopping up my tears.
The ending of Final Fantasy XV; I wasn't prepared to see my photographs from our adventures next to the credits!
The ending of Umineko: When They Cry, one of the strangest, most intense and most beautiful stories I've ever experienced, after which I couldn't listen to 'Ricordando il passato' without feeling like someone had punched me in the lungs.
The ending of Life Is Strange 2 (I got the 'Redemption' end), where I started sobbing so suddenly and uncontrollably after the timeskip that the cat was staring at me in alarm.
The dance flashback in The Last of Us, Part II, which I'd seen before multiple times in the trailer; I just couldn't handle suddenly seeing it again in the context of everything that came afterwards.
It's been a long time, but I have a strong suspicion I also cried the first time I saw the ending of Final Fantasy X.
Questions from
keltena:
Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?
ALL OF THEM.
In particular, I'd like to see more Final Fantasy XIII crossovers. 'You've all got a clock counting down on your lives, and you have to work out what a god wants you to do, because achieving your mutual goal is bad but failing is worse' is a great way to introduce characters to each other and force them to work together. It could be interesting to see the 13 Sentinels or Persona 4 or Danganronpa characters dealing with that.
Also, while writing that, I had the terrible realisation that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has a large enough cast of teenagers for a Danganronpa game. 13 Sentinels/Danganronpa? I'd read it.
A game you wish your friends knew about?
If I could wave a magic wand and make everyone I know want to play a particular game, it'd probably be Umineko: When They Cry, appropriately enough. I love it so much, it had such an impact on me, but it's a bit of an acquired taste and requires a substantial investment of both time and money, so it's tricky to go around recommending it.
On the more accessible front, Exit/Corners is an in-browser mystery visual novel in the vein of Zero Escape or Your Turn to Die, and it's so high-quality I'm astonished that it's free. It has a grand total of nine fics on AO3, and I feel it deserves a larger fandom! The writing is strong, the plot is entertainingly twisty, Ink is a great protagonist, and it includes the most fleshed-out female character over seventy I've ever seen in a work of fiction.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of a videogame that's not nearly as widely known as it should be. If 'traumatised, time-travelling, occasionally amnesiac teenage mech pilots fighting a war they probably can't win' is a concept that appeals to you, pick it up immediately.
Finally (we're still on
keltena's questions):
If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?
A lot of my favourite games would be too dangerous to visit personally, I think! Or I love them on the basis of their characters, and I'd never actually manage to have a conversation with those characters if I spent a day there. Final Fantasy VIII? Good luck talking to Squall Leonhart. Final Fantasy X? Yuna would absolutely talk to me if I approached her, but she's a very private person, so it'd never get beyond surface-level polite conversation about the weather.
Fortunately, I have the perfect answer to this question! I would go to the Pokémon world and admire all the Pokémon and maybe cuddle a Bulbasaur if I'm lucky.
If you have any videogame-related questions of your own, feel free to ask in the comments! It may surprise you to learn this, but I like to talk about videogames.