My Reaction to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake

I didn't believe it at first. I thought it was a joke, or some sort of technical demo. I even thought it was just a movie! When I saw the trailer, I didn't allow myself to believe it. But then I did my research, and everywhere I went, it just confirmed what I was denying myself was true: The remake was happening.

Since 1997, people have been clamoring for a sequel to Final Fantasy 7. Since the launch of the Playstation 2, people have been clamoring for a remake. I myself, in my younger years, was also one of those who wished for a remake. I was one of those who wanted better graphics and voicework to be added to FF7. Hell, the reason I bought Kingdom Hearts 1 was SPECIFICALLY for the Final Fantasy 7 characters! So, I should be hyped, right?

Well, I feel cautious right now. A lot of notions are on my mind right now, a lot of questions. But I think the most important question is: why? Why now? Why are you doing a remake of an 18 year old game? Is Square-Enix that hungry for  more money?

I don't really know how to feel about this remake. I know I ought to be excited, but there's a lot of doubt. I know for a fact that the sense of wonder and amazement I felt when I was a kid, playing the original game for the first time, won't be there. If they remake the iconic scene of the camera panning across space until it reaches Aeris' face (YES I STILL SPELL IT LIKE THAT, I ALWAYS WILL) I won't be as amazed as I was in 1997. But maybe it isn't about reviving memories, maybe it's about making new ones from a classic story.

I don't think this remake is going to "ruin" the original game anymore than M. Night Shyamalan's abortion version of Avatar: The Last Airbender ruined the original show. Maybe the new version will be superior in terms of gameplay, maybe it won't be. I'm not sure. I won't, however, be one of those "this raped my childhood!" Kotaku types that like to cry and whine whenever what they hold dear from their youth is challenged or changed. I will accept this change, and I will judge this new remake on its own merits, not by the merits of its original PS1 iteration. Who knows? I might get surprised.

Another League of Legends Story

This is the story of the one time I ever decided to rage quit. Now, I want to say something clear here: I am not one to quit a game. Surrender? Maybe if the rest of my team wants to. Quit? Not me. So understand, please, that this moment was very much out of character for me.

Revisiting Princess Peach

On August of 2013, I wrote a blog entry on Princess Peach, where I made the argument that she isn't so much an object for Mario to rescue as much as she is a fairly realistic depiction of a brave woman in a hostage situation. A link here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/08/princess-peach-versus-feminism-is.html. However, when I shared that blog with a Facebook group I've long since abandoned, I was accused of being sexist, idiotic, and cherry picking. In hindsight, I should have really known better than to share a blog entry with a Facebook group that had become little more than an echo chamber for Third Wave feminism, atheism, and champagne socialism, but hindsight is 20/20. However, a mod from that group said something that had stuck in me ever since: "I didn't find much argument." And I asked myself, did I really make an argument? Since then, I've taken many moments to read and re-read my entry, and I said to myself "I can do better." And that's what today's blog is all about: a second analysis of Princess Peach and her role in the Mario games.

A Quick Word: Plans for the Summer

So all through May I've been dealing with final exams, projects, and other things, and for that reason I've not been updating as often as I'd like. But I want you all to know, there are plans for the months of June and July.

In June, as I'll be attending summer classes, I won't be updating nearly as often as I'd like, so expect two or three blogs. One of those, however, will be a retread to an earlier blog I wrote 2 years ago, in regards to Princess Peach and feminism. I want to take a second look into who Peach is, her role in the Nintendo universe, and explore if she really is as lacking in agency as her critics claim.

In July, a month where I'll have more free time, I intend to make a countdown of the top 11 video game villains. What you'll see is 11 blogs, each dedicated to exploring what makes a particular villain tic, and just what earns them the spot I give them. This 11 blog series will be a collection of analyses and opinion pieces, so please don't take it as gospel. As always, you are welcome to disagree with me.

Another blog entry I hope to make either in June or August is a short piece in regards to feminist critique in gaming. If I make it, you'll most likely see it published on August.

Art that Offends: Kill the Fa---t

Author's Note: The title of the video game to be discussed in this blog entry has been censored by my own choice. I did it because I want at least the titles of my blog entries to be Safe for Work.

If you've been paying attention to games media lately, you may have heard of a game seemingly designed to offend. This game, a first person shooter in the style of old arcade games like Boot Hill, is called Kill the Faggot. (I'd like to take this moment to apologize to my LGBT readers who have just read that word.) The title of the game may be offensive to sexual minorities, including homosexuals and bisexuals. However, the existence of the game raises a few powerful questions: what does it mean to be offended, and does being offended have any meaning?

A Word on Paid Mods

So let's imagine a hypothetical scenario: You have a woman, aged 30 or so, and she spent five years of her life writing a book. She did tons of research for the book, poured resource after resource to make sure the book was finished and published. And when she published it, it became a huge hit: number 1 New York Times Best Seller, Oprah Book Club Sticker, a movie deal with Paramount Pictures, the works! Then some 15 year old kid reads the book, saw the movie, and went to her own computer and started typing down a fanfic. Twenty chapters long, it's a sort of sequel to the woman's book, where the main character's daughter leads her own adventure. The girl thinks about publishing it on a website, but then opts for another idea: get it published as a book, and sell it. Now, here's the question: should she be allowed to do that? The answer to that question should be the same as to the question of whether mods should be paid for or not.

Remembering Time Stalkers

Way back in the year 2000, during the waning years of Sega as a video game giant, their last console, the Dreamcast, was hungry for RPG's. To be sure, the console was not without some fantastic titles (Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2), but some were...forgettable. One of these RPG's that have been forgotten by most gamers is Time Stalkers. But was Time Stalkers a truly bad experience? Was it simply a mediocre game that was rightly overshadowed by the titans of its genre? Or, was it an overlooked classic?