Archive for the ‘Essay’ Category
A Fate That Binds: Understanding the Narrative of Final Fantasy XIII
Over the years, it has become progressively easy to take the Final Fantasy series for granted. Cynicism and skepticism are seemingly the only responses that spring up in message boards and blogs whenever a new title is announced or released. Whether it is the graphics, the characters’ artwork, the premise, or the gameplay, there is always someone who would raise an eyebrow and question the integrity of the series and, consequently, launch a personal interpretation on where and when it has gone wrong. But the truth of the matter is that Final Fantasy had never had a directive path to begin with; it had never adhered to a grand scheme that it would borrow its ideas from; it had never, most certainly, pertained itself to someone or something. Just like The Legend of Zelda, developers usually come and go, directors and producers are swapped and shuffled, and old mentors are rehired to come up with new ideas. The question that presents itself is whether it is fair to impute the recent Final Fantasy XIII of faults it has never committed; that is, to deem it flawed simply because it didn’t abide the rules created by its antecedents. For self-conscious (and hopefully sensible) critics, the answer should be no.
On Fragile Dreams and Other Related Thoughts
I hurt, I tire, and I collapse. When I’m staring into the darkness, I find somehow entranced by it. Suddenly, I hear laughter. Fearless, mean, and yet kind. It calls to me. The days we spend together are long gone, drifting away like clouds in the breeze. Even though memories are often fleeting, all I need to do is close my eyes and your face appears, clear and forever young.
~1~
The furnished setting is that of a post-apocalyptia, but the crux of the narrative is something unusually different; Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon casts a cursory glimpse on the mass destruction of humanity, a realization that hardly warrants the severity of its conscious aftermath. By default, it’s a curious composition, as few games of similar fashion rarely heed the grievances of the survivors above the calamity, or at least within equal shifts. And, ironic as it might seem, seeing it plays more like a survival horror than anything else, the game’s objectives have nothing to do with survivability. Our justification to delve through Fragile Dreams focally pivot on the game’s uncommon protagonist, who is so hopelessly unremarkable that we cannot take our eyes off of him. His name is Seto, a young drifter who harbors a critical angst against his circumstances and that of the world that has surrendered to silence. His strident resolve to end his solitude propels him through the horrors of a declining civilization for the sake of finding a confidant who would pacify his frustrations. His odyssey, in other words, is not about surviving the aftermath, but rather about discovering the right reasons to survive through it.
The Worker and the Employer in Kafka’s Metamorphosis
Perhaps it is safe to say that Franz Kafka‘s literary uniqueness lies in the fact that he dramatizes conventional figures of speech and endows them with full and consistent detail; his tales act out the implications of metaphors buried in the text. Yet, to see nothing but an extended metaphor in Kafka’s work is not to see enough. The tale is too long, too packed with statements, too rich in meaning to be defined simply as a metaphor, no matter how extended, simply to the fact that it ignores the numerous statements in the narrative that deal with the presented conflict. These alone make for a textual and poetic complexity, which in hand eschew the overburdens of the single metaphor theory.
Screwball Conventions: The Comedy of Errors and Courtships
Screwball [pronounced skrue’bol] is a noun that means unbalanced, erratic, irrational, and unconventional, in which became a popular slang word in the 1930s. It was applied to films where everything was a juxtaposition: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, honest and dishonest, and most of all male and female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they battled it out. They lied to one another, often assuming indifferent personas toward each other. They often employed hideous tricks on each other, until finally after running out of inventions, fall into each other’s arms. It was fossilized comedy, physical and often painful, but mixed with the highest level of wit and sophistication, depending wholly on elegant and inventive writing. ~ via Modern Times
My introduction to such subgenre of comedy is very recent, and for someone who openly discloses his affection for romantic comedies, it is indeed a blissful discovery. In the last two weeks I have seen more films that I usually do in a single month, and my enamored admiration for the classics has never been as vigorous as it is now, and that what has led me to write this post in the first place. Truth to be told, however, is that I have had to truncate my original draft in order to make my exposition more concise and piercingly focused. You should grasp the matter of consistency that pervades the films that I have selected for my discussion below, as I try to elucidate meticulously their differences as well as their similarities. The bigger portion of the discussion will be reserved to what I believe is the quintessential screwball comedy, and that is The Philadelphia Story.
On Vanity
Perhaps the best approach to gloss over the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel is by introducing this snippet from “Fitzgerald’s Radiant World,” a critical piece written by Thomas Flanagan of The New York Reviews of Books:
This Side of Paradise had had a success, which was almost freakish, capturing the aspirations of a generation and especially of those within that generation who, like its author, aspired to be great writers. Reading it today, one blanches at its emotional and rhetorical excesses, and yet, as Matthew Bruccoli says, it was received as “an iconoclastic social document—even as a testament of revolt. Surprisingly, it was regarded as an experimental or innovative narrative because of the mixture of styles and the inclusion of plays and verse.” It was the autobiographical first novel of a very young writer who took himself very seriously, and who had not provided for his hero those escape hatches of irony . . . But it was not, by any stretch, the work of a man who planned a career as a writer of commercial fiction.
Even after more than ninety years of its publication, This Side of Paradise doesn’t quite exude a nostalgic archaism of narrative prose as one might generally expect, nor it purposefully exercises an ambition in creative writing or a contract to a lucrative career. While the novel might have laid the groundwork for Fitzgerald’s repute as a lyrical and clever innovator, the very stylistic elements he strings -episodic narrative, wavering point of view, stream-of-consciousness, the almost mystified mixture of prose, verse, and dramatic writings – are defiantly and consistently original for anyone who just started reading his oeuvres. His ostensibly experimental narrative, paired with a keen study of American contemporary in adolescence and young manhood, certainly cements This Side of Paradise as a perpetual classic of whenever and wherever.
The Squall of Resolve and Ambition
It appears it’s rather easy to criticize (or even ridicule) the chief titles of Final Fantasy games these days, considering that the release date of Final Fantasy XIII is creeping closer now. And of course, the easiest approach to do just that is by nitpicking the games’ plot and characterization, which might allude to a sense of criticism when, in actuality, it’s a mere trivia comprised of poor judgment and attention to cheap laughs (1UP’s childish “Top 5 Most Irritating RPG Protagonists” is an excellent contender). That doesn’t mean Final Fantasy games are exempted from criticism, but seldom have I ever read a practical critique of the games’ narrative and characters that not only is well-reasoned and valid but at least convincing.
Final Fantasy VIII also seems to be the favorite title among Final Fantasy critics (though the word “critics” might elevate their merit than necessary). Few of their assessments are legit but most of them are crudely vague. Saying the characters are “annoying”, or the plot is “awful”, or the gameplay is “broken” without giving any elaborative examples, or at least semi-extensive clarifications, doesn’t indicant anything evident on their conclusion. Of course, it is always the main character that gets the short end of the stick, and in this case, it’s always Squall Leonhart, the gunblade-wielding protagonist.
Quite the opposite, Squall, personally, is one of the most tenderly written leading characters I’ve ever encountered in an RPG. His lone wolf persona is nicely justified in his arc (more on that that later) and Kazushige Nojima, the writer of Final Fantasy VIII, made sure to disclose enough credentials for him to be as persuasively detached and compassionless toward the rest of his teammates, specially in the initial stages of the story. A specific plot device among many in Nojima’s design in Final Fantasy VIII is the prospect to perceive Squall’s inner thoughts and contemplations, which cleverly exposes and flourishes his character to the player than he candidly allows. Yet, Squall isn’t resistant to influence; indeed, he inevitably and willingly becomes to accept his comrades, confess his love to Rinoa, and assume his role as the student leader of the military school of Balamb Garden more earnestly. The following paragraphs will succinctly particularize this transformation by examining Squall’s character progression in the plot. In other words, spoilers are abundant.
A Revolutionary Insanity
In the midst of egotism, self-denial, social conformism, and self-made delusions that seem to pervade a large sum of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, the voice of reason seems to lose its echo among all the society’s hypocrisy. Yet, Yates’ commentary manages to be carried out by his characters, even though their selfish acts often overlap their criticism of the American’s suburbia of the 1950s. Frank and April Wheelers, the young and frustrated couple regrettably harbors little affection for each other just as much they dislike their hollowed existence in the estates of Revolution Road. They recognize that their youth is withering away on meaningless and unfulfilling prospects that rarely provide incentive to incite self-worth.
A Prime Example
I insensibly tend to compare any first-person shooter I pick up with Metroid Prime, forgetting the fact that a mutual share of vantage point doesn’t qualify a mutual comparison in design. Obviously, it would be incongruous to lump Metroid Prime, Far Cry 2, and Mirror’s Edge, for example, in a singular typology, partially since these games are representatives of their subgenres: fruitions that have conceptually meshed two or three novel devises in their premises. However, as subjective as this may sound, Metroid Prime properly culminates the enlivenment of an adventure and the ambiance of a first-person unlike no other. Even if we detach Prime into its elements, we will still come across to an opus finessed in quality and peerless gameplay. The Texan Retro Studios have certainly fashioned a tough model to follow, for them and for any game that aspires to tread Prime’s lead. Therefore, it would be better to consider this post as a critical accolade instead of an all-encompassing critique.
