Made for another world
I keep meaning to do a real update to this thing and inevitably end up slapping myself because there's always Something Else I Should Be Doing. Even so, I can't help the occasional musing, and this is the result.
10. Fifth Jerusalem, Xenosaga III
A great deal of the reason I went through Xenosaga was for the promise of a place like this. It took them three games, one of which was hands-down the most painful, infuriating, dehumanizing experience of my life (which, thank you God, speaks highly of my quality of life so far!), but finally - finally - they got it.
The minute you step onto Fifth Jerusalem, Namco's design and Kajiura's score place you at the beating heart of a galactic federation. It's so uplifting to see a streaming cityscape that feels functional and active instead of cold and motionless - too often futuristic cities are designed the same way that short-lived "space-age McDonalds" was, and they don't seem particularly attractive places to live. By contrast, I'd love to live in Fifth Jerusalem. It's always moving, always sleek, and an ambient launching pad for the rest of the game; feeling this small at the start of the adventure helps its scope feel all the more escalatingly grand.
The sight of the cityscape at night from the balcony of the park is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things I've seen in a game. That's all I can say.
As for the aforementioned score, have a listen. If there's any piece of music that so accurately captures the wonder and wanderlust of walking through a planetwide city at the peak of human civilization, it's this one, and it remains (unsurprisingly!) one of the most-played songs on my playlist. I'm a total sucker for chillout music, and somehow, Kajiura makes it work. She often does.
(I should note my opinion that Xenosaga III has some of the finest locales to appear in a video game, thanks in no small part to Kajiura's score, and picking just one was tough; I went with the sentimental choice of Fifth Jerusalem, but Old Miltia, Michtam, and the Floating Landmass are treats for the senses as well...and if I were being more objective, the king would be Abel's Ark, easily one of my top five dungeons of all time.
OF ALL TIME.)
9. Raccoon City, Resident Evil 2
A contested opinion, but this is still the most nightmarish location in the series.
A haunted mansion, an abandoned Antarctic research facility, an overtaken European village - these all have their various chills and thrills, but to go through Raccoon City in RE2 is like having an icy finger trail down your spine every step of the way. Over ten years later, the visuals remain profoundly unsettling. Overturned squad cars, crashed buses filled with mangled bodies. Fetid alleyways choked with litter and bizarre (sometimes hilarious) graffiti, and arms swaying over the lips of trash cans. An empty police station, filled with broken barricades and half-finished reports. Journal entries soaked in despair and suicide. Something flickering over a window right as you turn the corner.
That's just what you see. What you hear - well...put it this way. I remember playing this as a kid and turning down the volume whenever I had to step outside the police station because I could not stand the sound of hearing an entire city moan and slaver behind the wind. Even when my manly, courageous 25-year-old self plays it today, something about it still lingers after I close the door behind me. It's the sound of modern civilization's postmortem spasms; of course it would.
It's an odd section of the city to feel so, but stepping down into the basement of the police station has an equally profound effect. There's something about the stairways and cold halls down there - you know the kind: the bowels of any industrial complex - that already possess a certain lifelessness to them. Nothing moving. Nothing there. Now place that motionlessness and lifelessness below a city overrun by the walking dead. Everything above is a vivid urban hell of fire and blood and moving rot, an assault on your senses. You can't ever lower the gun, because something is always in front of you, or behind you, or has just spotted you from across that railing around the courtyard. And yet after that, somehow, it feels worse to walk down the stairs into a cold quiet. It's that feeling you get when you're going through a parking lot at night, and your car is the only one there.
For my part, this was the height of the series as concerns fear. It's just the right combination of what you see and what you don't see. There's some truly hideous (and sometimes cheesy) stuff lurking around the corner, sure - but there's also a great deal of void and silence. Fear, as Hitchcock knew but Hollywood has apparently forgotten, is at its purest when we don't see what it is we are supposed to be afraid of. No bloodsplattered gorn can rival the shadows we conjure up when we are completely in the dark. The imagination is a far more powerful vehicle for terror, and Raccoon City makes for delightful - and lasting - fuel.
8. The Flame Champion's Hideaway, Suikoden III
Sometimes less is more.
If there's any element tying every choice on this list together, it's probably immediate ambience. This place - a cold, uneven chain of caverns that pulse with a hollow chime - lacks for none of it. I've often lambasted the game for its score and its utilization, but the clock picked the right hour to break here, if you get me. It's the most somber locale in the game, even including the Sindar Ruins and Luc's nightmare vision, and you never feel so utterly far away from everything as you do in here.
I've often wondered if I'm alone in considering this area a kind of development for the Flame Champion himself. Facets of his character are already present all through the protagonists' stories - in Hugo's, his raw desire to protect his homeland; in Chris', his struggle with the title of "hero", the almost Job-like sense of feeling alone even when surrounded by others; in Geddoe's, the burden of long life, knowing your tomorrows outnumber all your loved ones'. And so the atmosphere here pronounces what you've experienced. The cold, isolated quiet running through these caverns is keenly allusive of what must have been the Flame Champion's own mindset after the Fire Bringer War.
Those gamers hungry for a feast for the eyes are likely to swoon more out of boredom than pleasure, but the visuals are only half of what makes this place. You know what's waiting for you at the end. The game hasn't said it outright, but you know what you're going to find. Hugo, Chris, even Geddoe - they come here with hope to find the Flame Champion. But the hideaway is as cold and bleak as the narrative logic that guides this last half hour of their third chapters, and that's how it needs to be. Hope, like fire, must be rekindled.
7. Flanoir, Tales of Symphonia
I turn so many heads when I tell people that Tales of Symphonia is one of my favorite games, especially when I include it in the same breath as games which would be considered far more mature and erudite. But it is. Seven years later, I can pick it up and find the memory of my preferred Lloyd configuration still hardwired into my fingers. I still know where to look for sidequests and every goddamn treasure chest. This game was my summer in 2004, and its cast and their adventure remain indelibly engraved on my heart.
At least some of the twist on those turned heads is likely owed to my gushing over strong world design, and...let's just say Symphonia doesn't even qualify for the mini flyweight division. Part of that is probably intentional - Symphonia's world is actually split, the landmasses of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla serving as parallel worlds when they were originally one. But that still doesn't explain the geopolitically cramped (even nonexistent, in Sylvarant's case) nature of these worlds, and the plethora of dime-store "elemental dungeons" along with some damning JRPG traditional baggage (sewers, insane forest puzzles, the fact that a village in the boondocks has better equipment for sale than the imperial capital) leaves the whole setting feeling smaller and lazier than it really ought to.
So what's a town from such a lacking world doing here? Because Symphonia is a game that eschews the general for the particular. The actual towns and dungeons in Symphonia have considerably more character individually than they do collectively - which can be a crippling flaw for world design, but maybe not so bad for the gamer who just wants to go into a town that has legitimate character.
And Flanoir does. There's not much to do here, really - there's a sidequest involving the game's ultimate weapons that occasionally brings you back, and it serves as the party's last pit stop before another false climax (Tales game, remember?), but otherwise it's just a quiet winter resort town. Delicate snowfall, cozy fires, a stately but standard church, ice sculpture shoutouts, etc. But the developers took the time to make it look like a place you'd go to to get away from the heat and stresses of life in a busy world - there's this country cottage ambience around every turn, and the intricacy with which they designed living structures (one of Symphonia's aesthetic strengths) is in full force here.
As always, some sentimental value for me: this is where Lloyd can choose to have a mutually revealing conversation with his "soulmate", the member of the party you've had him grow closest to over the course of the game. Night-before-the-final-battle talks can be very tiring to sit through, but the writing and the acting in these makes them very compelling (and a lot of that is due to The Goddamn Scott Menville), and it gains something that would be lacking without that soft midnight snowfall in front of an old church.
Besides - there's a giant fucking snow Pac-Man in the back of the town. That alone makes it worth dropping in.
6. The Dark Rift, Skies of Arcadia
Who'd have thought a game that so charismatically emphasizes courage, confidence, and teamwork would produce such a chilling unknown? A virtually impassable, pitch-black sky rift that houses an immense garden of strange plants, particle fountains, and cloudstone formations - and around it all, a graveyard of shipwrecks. You don't really feel the gravity of the despair and defeat you saw in Esperanza until you sail through this, and see all the many monuments of those who tried before you.
The game could have left it at that, and then it brings you to the eye of the Rift. Here there are no shipwrecks. Instead are countless vortices that lead to other currents in the rift, and floating before you are dozens of black moonstones (which are never seen anywhere in the world except the Dark Rift), centralized around a much larger one with a uniquely wandering glow. The implication is obvious - perhaps a great deal of the nature of the Dark Rift could be revealed in turn by the nature of this hovering stone - and yet...you simply don't know what that nature could be. Even the discovery log seems uncertain how to describe this thing. It's just there. And you sail on, and leave with questions, not answers.
That's the genius of this place, and of Skies in general. The discovery somehow preserves the unknown instead of neatly trimming it away. Long after you've left the Rift behind, it's still the greatest mystery in the world - and in a world like Arcadia, that is extraordinary.
(One other location from Skies nearly beat this, and you can read my thoughts on it here.)
That felt better. I feel more often lately that, as much as reality is worth dealing with, alternatives look better and better as the years go on.
10. Fifth Jerusalem, Xenosaga III
A great deal of the reason I went through Xenosaga was for the promise of a place like this. It took them three games, one of which was hands-down the most painful, infuriating, dehumanizing experience of my life (which, thank you God, speaks highly of my quality of life so far!), but finally - finally - they got it.
The minute you step onto Fifth Jerusalem, Namco's design and Kajiura's score place you at the beating heart of a galactic federation. It's so uplifting to see a streaming cityscape that feels functional and active instead of cold and motionless - too often futuristic cities are designed the same way that short-lived "space-age McDonalds" was, and they don't seem particularly attractive places to live. By contrast, I'd love to live in Fifth Jerusalem. It's always moving, always sleek, and an ambient launching pad for the rest of the game; feeling this small at the start of the adventure helps its scope feel all the more escalatingly grand.
The sight of the cityscape at night from the balcony of the park is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things I've seen in a game. That's all I can say.
As for the aforementioned score, have a listen. If there's any piece of music that so accurately captures the wonder and wanderlust of walking through a planetwide city at the peak of human civilization, it's this one, and it remains (unsurprisingly!) one of the most-played songs on my playlist. I'm a total sucker for chillout music, and somehow, Kajiura makes it work. She often does.
(I should note my opinion that Xenosaga III has some of the finest locales to appear in a video game, thanks in no small part to Kajiura's score, and picking just one was tough; I went with the sentimental choice of Fifth Jerusalem, but Old Miltia, Michtam, and the Floating Landmass are treats for the senses as well...and if I were being more objective, the king would be Abel's Ark, easily one of my top five dungeons of all time.
OF ALL TIME.)
9. Raccoon City, Resident Evil 2
A contested opinion, but this is still the most nightmarish location in the series.
A haunted mansion, an abandoned Antarctic research facility, an overtaken European village - these all have their various chills and thrills, but to go through Raccoon City in RE2 is like having an icy finger trail down your spine every step of the way. Over ten years later, the visuals remain profoundly unsettling. Overturned squad cars, crashed buses filled with mangled bodies. Fetid alleyways choked with litter and bizarre (sometimes hilarious) graffiti, and arms swaying over the lips of trash cans. An empty police station, filled with broken barricades and half-finished reports. Journal entries soaked in despair and suicide. Something flickering over a window right as you turn the corner.
That's just what you see. What you hear - well...put it this way. I remember playing this as a kid and turning down the volume whenever I had to step outside the police station because I could not stand the sound of hearing an entire city moan and slaver behind the wind. Even when my manly, courageous 25-year-old self plays it today, something about it still lingers after I close the door behind me. It's the sound of modern civilization's postmortem spasms; of course it would.
It's an odd section of the city to feel so, but stepping down into the basement of the police station has an equally profound effect. There's something about the stairways and cold halls down there - you know the kind: the bowels of any industrial complex - that already possess a certain lifelessness to them. Nothing moving. Nothing there. Now place that motionlessness and lifelessness below a city overrun by the walking dead. Everything above is a vivid urban hell of fire and blood and moving rot, an assault on your senses. You can't ever lower the gun, because something is always in front of you, or behind you, or has just spotted you from across that railing around the courtyard. And yet after that, somehow, it feels worse to walk down the stairs into a cold quiet. It's that feeling you get when you're going through a parking lot at night, and your car is the only one there.
For my part, this was the height of the series as concerns fear. It's just the right combination of what you see and what you don't see. There's some truly hideous (and sometimes cheesy) stuff lurking around the corner, sure - but there's also a great deal of void and silence. Fear, as Hitchcock knew but Hollywood has apparently forgotten, is at its purest when we don't see what it is we are supposed to be afraid of. No bloodsplattered gorn can rival the shadows we conjure up when we are completely in the dark. The imagination is a far more powerful vehicle for terror, and Raccoon City makes for delightful - and lasting - fuel.
8. The Flame Champion's Hideaway, Suikoden III
Sometimes less is more.
If there's any element tying every choice on this list together, it's probably immediate ambience. This place - a cold, uneven chain of caverns that pulse with a hollow chime - lacks for none of it. I've often lambasted the game for its score and its utilization, but the clock picked the right hour to break here, if you get me. It's the most somber locale in the game, even including the Sindar Ruins and Luc's nightmare vision, and you never feel so utterly far away from everything as you do in here.
I've often wondered if I'm alone in considering this area a kind of development for the Flame Champion himself. Facets of his character are already present all through the protagonists' stories - in Hugo's, his raw desire to protect his homeland; in Chris', his struggle with the title of "hero", the almost Job-like sense of feeling alone even when surrounded by others; in Geddoe's, the burden of long life, knowing your tomorrows outnumber all your loved ones'. And so the atmosphere here pronounces what you've experienced. The cold, isolated quiet running through these caverns is keenly allusive of what must have been the Flame Champion's own mindset after the Fire Bringer War.
Those gamers hungry for a feast for the eyes are likely to swoon more out of boredom than pleasure, but the visuals are only half of what makes this place. You know what's waiting for you at the end. The game hasn't said it outright, but you know what you're going to find. Hugo, Chris, even Geddoe - they come here with hope to find the Flame Champion. But the hideaway is as cold and bleak as the narrative logic that guides this last half hour of their third chapters, and that's how it needs to be. Hope, like fire, must be rekindled.
7. Flanoir, Tales of Symphonia
I turn so many heads when I tell people that Tales of Symphonia is one of my favorite games, especially when I include it in the same breath as games which would be considered far more mature and erudite. But it is. Seven years later, I can pick it up and find the memory of my preferred Lloyd configuration still hardwired into my fingers. I still know where to look for sidequests and every goddamn treasure chest. This game was my summer in 2004, and its cast and their adventure remain indelibly engraved on my heart.
At least some of the twist on those turned heads is likely owed to my gushing over strong world design, and...let's just say Symphonia doesn't even qualify for the mini flyweight division. Part of that is probably intentional - Symphonia's world is actually split, the landmasses of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla serving as parallel worlds when they were originally one. But that still doesn't explain the geopolitically cramped (even nonexistent, in Sylvarant's case) nature of these worlds, and the plethora of dime-store "elemental dungeons" along with some damning JRPG traditional baggage (sewers, insane forest puzzles, the fact that a village in the boondocks has better equipment for sale than the imperial capital) leaves the whole setting feeling smaller and lazier than it really ought to.
So what's a town from such a lacking world doing here? Because Symphonia is a game that eschews the general for the particular. The actual towns and dungeons in Symphonia have considerably more character individually than they do collectively - which can be a crippling flaw for world design, but maybe not so bad for the gamer who just wants to go into a town that has legitimate character.
And Flanoir does. There's not much to do here, really - there's a sidequest involving the game's ultimate weapons that occasionally brings you back, and it serves as the party's last pit stop before another false climax (Tales game, remember?), but otherwise it's just a quiet winter resort town. Delicate snowfall, cozy fires, a stately but standard church, ice sculpture shoutouts, etc. But the developers took the time to make it look like a place you'd go to to get away from the heat and stresses of life in a busy world - there's this country cottage ambience around every turn, and the intricacy with which they designed living structures (one of Symphonia's aesthetic strengths) is in full force here.
As always, some sentimental value for me: this is where Lloyd can choose to have a mutually revealing conversation with his "soulmate", the member of the party you've had him grow closest to over the course of the game. Night-before-the-final-battle talks can be very tiring to sit through, but the writing and the acting in these makes them very compelling (and a lot of that is due to The Goddamn Scott Menville), and it gains something that would be lacking without that soft midnight snowfall in front of an old church.
Besides - there's a giant fucking snow Pac-Man in the back of the town. That alone makes it worth dropping in.
6. The Dark Rift, Skies of Arcadia
Who'd have thought a game that so charismatically emphasizes courage, confidence, and teamwork would produce such a chilling unknown? A virtually impassable, pitch-black sky rift that houses an immense garden of strange plants, particle fountains, and cloudstone formations - and around it all, a graveyard of shipwrecks. You don't really feel the gravity of the despair and defeat you saw in Esperanza until you sail through this, and see all the many monuments of those who tried before you.
The game could have left it at that, and then it brings you to the eye of the Rift. Here there are no shipwrecks. Instead are countless vortices that lead to other currents in the rift, and floating before you are dozens of black moonstones (which are never seen anywhere in the world except the Dark Rift), centralized around a much larger one with a uniquely wandering glow. The implication is obvious - perhaps a great deal of the nature of the Dark Rift could be revealed in turn by the nature of this hovering stone - and yet...you simply don't know what that nature could be. Even the discovery log seems uncertain how to describe this thing. It's just there. And you sail on, and leave with questions, not answers.
That's the genius of this place, and of Skies in general. The discovery somehow preserves the unknown instead of neatly trimming it away. Long after you've left the Rift behind, it's still the greatest mystery in the world - and in a world like Arcadia, that is extraordinary.
(One other location from Skies nearly beat this, and you can read my thoughts on it here.)
That felt better. I feel more often lately that, as much as reality is worth dealing with, alternatives look better and better as the years go on.