Saturday, March 16, 2024

FFVII Rebirth Travelogue - From Gongaga to Cosmo Canyon

 It's interesting to see the various environments in Final Fantasy VII. What little of the original game I had seen as a kid was all in Midgar, the massive modern/futuristic metropolis. Remake, the first entry in what I believe is intended to be a trilogy of FFVII re-visits, extends the Midgar portion of the game into an entire game in and of itself, so 2020's release more or less helped contribute to my sense of the game as being very Midgar-focused.

Of course, Rebirth starts off with the party having left Midgar, moving on to the town of Kalm, and makes a full game out of what I'm given to understand is the middle act of the story.

This has its plus sides and its minuses. The plusses include that you get to see a lot of the world. At this stage, I've gone from the Grasslands region to Junon's more coastal area, then over to the expansive Corel region, which includes a tropical coastal region and a big desert (there's also a giant mountain, but this is treated to an extent as a kind of transitional area without any of the big "world exploration" stuff). Then, there's Gongaga, a tangled jungle filled with lots of cliffs and caves (which so far has proven to be the most difficult to navigate).

Some spoilers crop up here and there:

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Could You Do Dawn-Age D&D?

 One of the central assumptions in D&D, and frankly most fantasy, is that the world is old. In D&D in particular, the oldness of the world presents you with some golden opportunities - you get many generations (or strata) of bygone civilizations whose relics and even whose villains might emerge in the modern day or be discovered in dungeons.

My own homebrew setting, for example, has a fully futuristic era in the distant, 20,000 year past that ended in a catastrophe that unleashed new eldritch abominations worshipped as false deities by psychotic cults and led to a genuinely horrifying millennium of apocalyptic terror, with history as it is generally known only starting after that point.

While I love having the supernatural at play in my fantasy settings, I do tend to still prefer a world that has some resemblance to the real world, and that includes the fact that human history is just a minuscule portion of our planet's. That means accounting for billions of years of the planet's existence prior to the events of one's stories.

But, that being said, fantasy is, I think, nearly indistinguishable from myth except for the fact that it's explicitly fictional. And given the pre-scientific time that human myths' foundational texts come from, most (or at least the texts known most widely in the west) severely underestimate the world's age, placing the emergence of humanity not long after the creation of the world itself.

The era of the world's creation is invariably momentous, and the events that take place in that first era set the stage for the future dramas and conflicts to come. Consider, for example, how the kind of "first act" in Tokien's cosmos is the Music of the Ainur, and how Melkor's desire to basically improvise his own hellish jazz solo in the middle of a symphony so that he can be the star of the concert is what introduces evil to creation. Tokien's world of Arda (of which Middle-Earth is a continent) goes through multiple eras before there's even a sun and moon - first with two great lamps, and then those lamps are replaced with two great trees, and only after those are killed are the sun and moon created.

So, could you run a campaign set in a Dawn Age? One in which the world is young, and the player characters are among the first or second generation of mortals?

In some ways, this would be very difficult, but I think there's an aspect of this that is actually quite fitting:

Player characters in D&D are powerful. And the figures of legend in the distant past of fantasy settings tend to have super-human power. Frankly, at least in 5E, player characters quickly become essentially superheroes.

But let's talk challenges:

D&D loves ancient ruins and relics of lost civilizations. If humanity's (or the mortal races') history dates back only a generation, then basically nothing was around long enough to be a lost civilization. At best, if we're going for maybe a generation past the beginning of the world, you might lament some great person's downfall and the loss of their creations.

Likewise, the very nature of something like a fiend as a distinct thing from a celestial might not have taken place yet - Asmodeus, for example, in D&D's lore, is thought to have been a fallen celestial (though somewhere it was suggested that he's more akin to a Great Old One, and that "Asmodeus" is only the avatar of the great serpent Ahirman, which lingers in the Nine Hells recuperating from its fall into them... which actually could work for a celestial past too).

    This, then, raises an interesting wrinkle, and gives you some wiggle room: is this the beginning beginning, or just the beginning of the mortal races on this world? In Christian tradition, the beginning of the world happens some time after Lucifer's rebellion against God, but I don't know if there's a canonical timeline there.

Let's also talk aberrations. Technically, this creature type can mean a few different things, including the results of botched arcane experiments (essentially having a bit of overlap with hybrid-creature monstrosities like the Owlbear) but I think most people generally associate aberrations with the Lovecraftian ancient beings like Aboleths and Mind Flayers (I'll note here that Kraken, as described, feel like they could easily also count as aberrations, except perhaps because they were created by the gods rather than existing in some before-time).

    I'll probably write a post some day about how aberrations don't actually really fit in D&D if you want to run it as pure fantasy rather than partially sci-fi - there's such an overlap between them and demons (not so much devils) that you almost need to genre-bend to make them work. Luckily for me, I adore genre-bending and blending my sci fi and fantasy together, so it works great!

Still, if you want a setting in which the gods didn't just arrive on some existing world and create people to inhabit it, but truly created the world itself, it's going to be hard to work in those ancient aberrations (though the sometime-rumored notion that the Mind Flayers are actually time-travelers from a distant future does kind of solve this issue as well).

A lot of mythologies have multiple groups of divine beings. In Greek Myth, the Olympians are only the last couple generations of gods, with the Titans pre-dating them, and beings like Gaia predating them. Norse myth has the Vanir and the Aesir. I suspect that these might both be instances of syncretism - the active incorporation of multiple religious traditions to promote social cohesion between the adherents of different faiths - especially likely in the Norse case given that the Aesir and Vanir are foes who eventually become allies.

But if we're using the Greek pantheon as inspiration, this gives us another interesting question: are the gods of our Dawn Age the gods that will be prominently revered and worshipped later on in this setting?

Again, given the degree to which player characters grow in power in 5E, I'd almost be tempted to suggest that the party could actually be that second generation of gods.

And in that sense, I think the appeal here is that, while coming up with a backstory for a D&D character can often be very fun and a chance at creativity, this kind of campaign would encourage forward-thinking about legacy.

Like many others, I recently watched the second part of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune. Dune, of course, has plenty of prologue history in it - it's set about 20,000 years in the future (don't let the year in the story fool you - it's 10,191, but not by the Gregorian calendar, but dating back to the formation of the Spacing Guild, itself happening about 10,000 years from now,) but what's interesting is that the first book's chapters each have an excerpt of from history books written about Paul's ascension to becoming Emperor, and given how the later books of the series go, Paul's reign itself is looked back on as a golden age of kindness and justice compared with the brutality of his son's millennia-long reign as God-Emperor (even if Paul's reign is filled with war and genocide).

Thus, the first book, so far in our future, could be described as a kind of Dawn Age myth for the civilization that follows (naturally this is, of course, a lesson for anyone thinking about their era as the only one that matters).

In a weird and very different way, in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, the first book of the series, The Gunslinger, takes on this kind of mythic quality as well, with the title character Roland traveling through an almost dream-like experience and the boy he finds in the desert, Jake, only later able to recall those experiences from a life that isn't consistent with what actually happened to him.

I'll concede that it might be too hard to create a campaign based on a world that is brand-new. But I do think there's perhaps an opportunity, if you have a consistent table that is also invested in world-building and storytelling (which might be a big "if,") to do something really cool by imagining the grand expanse of time that might come between campaigns.

Critical Role has been a great opportunity to see a single campaign setting change and evolve and feel the impact of multiple campaigns, but it's still on a pretty human scale - I think that campaign 3 is only about 30 years after the events of campaign 1.

I'd be excited to see a legacy that extends thousands of years.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Entering the Golden Saucer

 I guess at this stage this is more like a video game travelogue. The Corel region in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth appears to be three if not four regions in one. After the cruise ship from Junon (with a fun little interlude that involves a cosmic-horror monster) the party gets to Costa del Sol, where Rebirth's sense of stakes and urgency are at a classically JRPG-level of conflict and the party has a fun beach vacation while keeping an eye on the mysterious robed figures.

Oh, spoilers ahead.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Final Fantasy and the Minigame Obsession

 So, don't get me wrong: I'm having a blast playing through Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. While I don't have the deeply ingrained nostalgia of others my age who played the original game when they were eleven, I genuinely really like the cast of characters, and on top of that feel really grateful for Remake coming out at sort of the perfect time to help lift my spirits at the onslaught of the Covid 19 pandemic.

I also think that Remake and Rebirth have hit a real sweet spot when it comes to blending the strategic gameplay of the old FF menu-based ATB system with a more action-focused approach (something that I think the other recent game in the franchise, FFXVI, failed to do - the action gameplay in the first couple hours was great, but it never felt like it grew beyond that point).

Unlike the relatively linear Remake, which paused occasionally to give you periods of downtime to do sidequests, Rebirth opens up into various world regions with a big checklist of things to accomplish before moving on. You don't strictly have to do these things, but I am doing them (the sole exception being that I didn't do all the Junon Queen's Blood stuff, which I now regret because it turned out the intermission period after finishing Junon and going to Costa Del Sol happened to have a giant Queen's Blood tournament.

Hitting Costa Del Sol then dumps you into a ton of minigames (I actually practiced playing Tifa's theme on the piano long enough to do decently in the full performance). Between playing essentially Rocket League as Red XIII, a shooting gallery, a series of Queen's Blood puzzles (boy did they go all in on that!) it did feel a bit like I was waiting a super long time to get back into the action.

And some have been downright frustrating. I still don't feel like I have a solid feel for Queen's Blood strategy - I mostly seem to have to restart a match over and over until I stumble into a winning play.

I get the sense that Square Enix's philosophy toward game design is "more is more," and to a degree I can appreciate that - I really like hanging out with these people, and given what I know of what happens to Aerith at least in the original game, I'm not really in a rush to move the plot forward (though I wonder what time shenanigans will ensue and if she'll be ok - at some great cosmic cost - there's definitely some cryptic stuff going on with her that I suspect is not from the original game).

Anyway, I seem to have hit the third "go around and do exploration and side quests" part of the game. Oh, and Yuffie has joined the party finally!

But I'll leave with this complaint: why the hell does Barret not get to get some cool beach clothing? I get that he likes the sailor suit, but I think this is discrimination against big guys with broad shoulders and barrel chests and I will not stand for this injustice!

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Putting Together the Various New FFVII Rebirth Mechanics

 FFVII Remake was the first in the trilogification of 1997's beloved seventh entry in the Final Fantasy series - itself the quintessential JRPG series. VII's original release did introduce some new ideas, mechanically, as all the games have, but was still true to the classic JRPG formula in which most monsters you fight occur in random encounters, on a separate "battle screen" that abstracts the movement and action into a turn-based system.

VII Remake did what Final Fantasy games have been doing since XII (or I guess XI, but as an MMO, I kind of don't count XI or XIV as part of the core series, regardless of their numeral legitimization) and tried to break out of that old system and put a little more action and continuity with the overall game world into it.

But unlike the solutions I've seen in XII and XVI, I actually thought that they did an incredible job balancing this drive toward fast-paced action while retaining the strategic decision-making from the old turns-and-menus system of the past (I suspect I'd have liked XVI a lot more if it had just copied this combat system... and also made Clive's friends and allies into full-fledged, controllable party members).

Rebirth thankfully retains the basic premise of Remake's combat system. Once again, regular attacks build up ATB, which can pool into a maximum of two charges, and most spells, abilities, and using items take one of these charges. The character you have direct control over will typically build up ATB quicker, so if you want to keep it simple you can just focus on their abilities, but as you get more comfortable with it, swapping characters constantly starts to feel deliberate and reasonable.

Each character has a unique ability outside of the ATB-fueled "abilities" in their main menu that gives their basic attacks a different rhythm. Cloud, for example, can swap between a speedy single-target Operator Mode and a heavier-hitting AoE mode that makes you slower called Punisher Mode. Barret's arm-gun can fire a quick burst of damage, but then needs to recharge before you can do this again, the special ability button allowing you to spend a second or so speeding up that recharge time.

I think these are the same as they were for the previous game, though Aerith's might have changed, and post-Remake, Red XIII has joined as a full-fledged playable character with his own unique ability. I'm given to understand that Yuffie, Cid, and Cait Sith will join up later in the game, though Vincent Valentine, while appearing in Rebirth, does not appear to be playable in this part either (perhaps similarly to how Red XIII joined the party without being playable in the last part of Remake).

Materia appears to work the same way - you determine what spells and other bonuses you get by socketing these balls of magical energy into your weapons and armor (armor being more of a bracer of some sort). Materia will grow more powerful as the person wearing it fights battles, which unlocks things like upgraded spells (Fire becoming Fira and then Firaga). Note that the party starts at level 15 in Rebirth, so even if you had fully-maxed-out stuff in Remake, it doesn't carry over.

Each character of course has their own category of weapon, such as big swords for Cloud or Staves for Aerith, and like in Remake, each individual weapon has its own unique skill, but if you use the weapon enough and perform the actions to gain its proficiency bonus, you'll unlock that skill regardless of what weapon you're wielding - meaning that you'll want to gain that ASAP and then swap to any new weapon you've gotten to collect them all, and then when you've done that, pick the weapon with the stats you prefer.

Now, let's move on to the new stuff:

In Remake, most of your character progression was linked to various spheres in your weapon upgrades. Rebirth has kind of separated these out - the weapon unlocks new passive bonuses and materia slots as it levels up (meaning you might be inclined to swap them even after getting their proficiency bonuses, unless I'm misinterpreting something here - the weapon leveling might actually be character-focused rather than tied to the item). The other things, which include new abilities and passive bonuses, are now handled via a character's "Folio." Essentially, it's a bit like a book that charts the character's development, and you have to go to bookstores or little vending kiosks to spend skill points in your Folios. Still, this feels fairly similar to the weapon spheres from Remake, and it's free to assign the points you have and you can always reset them for free.

Probably the biggest mechanical addition is Synergy Attacks, which... I'll be frank, I don't entirely understand yet.

And that's in part because it's really two things.

While you're holding R1 to block, you'll get a menu of attacks to choose from. These attacks are unlocked in your Folios, but they're all tied to one of the other characters - for example, if you have one of Cloud's abilities that works with Barret, you'll need Barret in the active party to use it.

These can be helpful - Barret has one that gives him and an ally momentary damage immunity, for example, and there are some that launch Tifa in the air to punch flying enemies - as an alternative to your regular attacks. But they'll also build up a kind of bond over the course of a fight that will eventually allow Limit Break-like Synergy Attacks between two of your characters.

I... I don't really know exactly how these work. But boy, when they do, they land like a freaking nuke.

So, there's a pretty deep level of complexity to these systems. I honestly think that the Remake combat was close to as good as one could get, so while the Synergy stuff is cool, I'm still not 100% sold that it will make combat feel particularly better.

This is just scratching the surface - there seems to be a kind of "relationship level" that Cloud has with the other party members and I don't know if that's tied to Synergy attacks, story stuff, or what. I've already put 14 hours into this game and feel like I'm a substantial chunk into the game's second major area, but I suspect I'll have to be halfway through at least to really get the full feel of it.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Am I Mad to Be a Compeltionist in FFVII Rebirth?

 I didn't finish FFXVI in part because I got burned out on all the side quests. That game's world was clearly very carefully built (if, admittedly, they clearly wanted to make Final Fantasy Game of Thrones) but the side quests were like Vanilla World of Warcraft-level oldschool in design - go to this place and collect these things off the ground kinda stuff.

But even if I kind of liked Clive and definitely Cid in XVI, I think that that game suffers profoundly by being primarily a single-character game (also, the lack of real strategic decisions as to what abilities you use, instead really working more like a God of War-style action game... and forgetting that GoW is secretly an environmental puzzle game with brief combat interludes).

But FFVII's cast of characters has 26 years of enduring appeal, and personally, I find its quasi-modern fantasy world really exciting to play in, even if, after escaping Midgar, you find yourself in a more classical fantasy grassy area (the town of Kalm looks like a perfectly preserved European village that is nonetheless a hub of modern life - it's one of the prettiest RPG towns I've been in).

Anyway, Remake was a pretty linear experience, with, essentially, a handful of chapters full of side quests, but most of the story taking you through the plot at a pretty good clip. There were side quests, but they were kind of confined to these particular phases of the game.

Rebirth opens the world up a lot - not only do you now get to choose your party composition (in Remake the people in your party are always determined by the plot, and even though Red XIII joins you near the end, you never get to control him as a full party member,) but the world really opens up in this big area to explore.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly given the way that Square Enix does things, the map gets populated with a hundred different things to do and find.

There is a... a lot of tutorial stuff early in the game. And that includes the very secondary game of Queen's Blood, which the game wants you to get into and search out special cards to add to your deck. But there's also all of this world research that the weird little Chadley kid (who's really a cyborg) wants you to do.

Still, for whatever reason, I'm not feeling terribly impatient to get to the plot - perhaps having the lengthy prologue in Nibelheim satisfied that desire for the time being - so I'm honestly just enjoying hanging out with these characters and killing monsters.

There are some new systems I haven't totally gotten the hang of. Folios are a little easier to figure out - in addition to weapon upgrades (which seem simplified compared to Remake) you'll also get these "Folios" that allow you to grant the characters certain active and passive abilities (the passives taking the place, it seems, of the stuff you got with the weapon upgrades in Remake). More confusing is Synergy attacks, which I genuinely haven't figured out yet - usually I seem unable to actually use them and I don't really know why.

Still, plugging Materia into weapons and armor still gives you spells and other abilities, just like the last game (and I assume the original) so to a large extent I think I need to just get back into practice. Unlike XVI and, you know, Elden Ring, I think there's far less of an expectation that you'll perfectly dodge all the attacks.

Anyway, I'm likely ok to move on to the Swamp area past the Grasslands, but for now I'm just going to check all the boxes and try to unlock the Titan summon materia.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Stepping Back into FFVII with Rebirth

 I must be unusual of my generation of video game nerds in that I never played Final Fantasy VII. When it came out I was just getting into console gaming, and I only had Nintendo systems, on top of being in a Mac family. So all the avenues to play this now-beloved game were closed, and I never got around to it.

But it was hard to escape the existence of the game and its plot being the kind of nerd who would eventually have a gaming blog, and so I've had this vague sense of the game for a long time (a friend had it on PC, and I remember seeing the Midgar freeway escape sequence).

2020's Final Fantasy Remake, which had been announced like a decade prior, brought these beloved characters into a hi-res, modern game, which I thought did an amazing job combining SquareEnix's drive toward more action-oriented gameplay while retaining the strategic menu-based gameplay of classic Final Fantasy (something that Final Fantasy XVI I think failed to do, leaning so far into the action side of things that I grew bored with it as it was basically just about using any and all of your abilities as soon as they came off cooldown).

But Remake only remade the first section of the game - the adventures taking place within the city of Midgar. What had, I'm given to understand, been only the first three or so hours of the original game was blown up into a full game in its own right.

Beyond this expansion, though, Remake also introduced some new plot elements - a notion that this was not going to be the same story, precisely, but a kind of alternate timeline.

Er, spoilers ahead.