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Features
For the thirteenth Craft Check column, I thought it would be fun to go back and revisit all of the crafts featured in Cerise this year and share some ideas for elaborations and variations. So if you’ve tried some of the crafts and want more, or if you’ve been holding off and waiting for more inspiration, be sure to check out all the ideas in this column!
Latoya tackles the recent controversy surrounding Grand Theft Auto IV and suggests directions that future installments could take in order to improve the quality of the series.
Articles
Author: Samara Steele
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP organization.
Author: Olivia Luna
In an IRIS retrospective, Olivia recaps some of the more memorable milestones of the past year.
Author: Robyn Fleming
Robyn shares her thoughts on a recent preview of D&D 4th Edition, held by Wizards of the Coast in Los Angeles, California.
Gamer Stories
Author: Robyn Fleming
Author: Olivia Luna
Author: Karen Healey
Reviews
Author: Melissa Velte
Author: Andrea Rubenstein
Author: Richard Pilbeam
Odds ‘n Ends
By Richard Pilbeam
Final Fantasy VI, Squaresoft, Super Nintendo Entertainment System , 1994
Final Fantasy VI is, as everybody knows, one of the greatest games ever made. Everybody happens to be right for a change, so heaping praise upon the thing is quite magnificently redundant. Amidst this praise, though, precisely why the game was so successful isn’t discussed; it’s something we simply take as read, occasionally fishing around for phrases like “epic story” and “three-dimensional characters”. The argument that it’s the story and characters that make the game a success, however, simply isn’t supported by the game’s content. Looked at in isolation, without making any allowances for nostalgia, the story is revealed to be juvenile, cliche-ridden and often just plain illogical, driven by characters whose choices frequently defy all reason. Remake it as an Anime and, quite rightly, nobody would consider it in any way special. Why, then, is it recalled so fondly?
The answer is that we’re not remembering the story itself, we’re remembering the experience of playing the game, because - in a way that the subsequent games in the series spectacularly failed to emulate - the game and the story are both functioning as part of the same aesthetic. It’s not a game with a story attached, or a story that lets you control the characters while they walk between town, it’s an experience where the game and the story are the same thing. It’s not surprising, then, that even those of us who couldn’t care less about the story of later installments still feel as if we’ve got a personal stake in the story of Final Fantasy VI, because the characters and the player are always working toward the same goal. Yet it only takes two games for this approach to completely unravel, and by Final Fantasy VIII the magic-fuelled time-travelling war in which the characters take part is constantly sidelined to allow them to whine about their preternaturally tedious love lives. It’s no wonder that, after the hype had died down, criticism of the story became increasingly vocal and divisive. The problem isn’t that the story is any more banal than we’re used to, it’s that, for the first time, it’s surplus to requirements. There’s simply no reason to care about the love story between Squall and Rinoa, because it’s wholly independent of the player’s actions.
In contrast, look at the rather more low-key relationship between Celes and CId in Final Fantasy VI. Stranded on an island together after a cataclysm which all but destroys the world, they become a surrogate family, with the elderly Cid referring to the much younger Celes as his “Granddaughter” despite not being a blood relative. He is, however, overworked and on the verge of dying of exhaustion. Taking control of Celes, it’s the player’s job to travel from Cid’s hut down to the beach and catch fish for him to help him regain his strength. Cid’s health is declining at a steady rate, and each fish he’s fed restores a portion of it, but - and this is what makes the sequence nerve-wracking, even to saddos who’ve played through the game dozens of times already - there are different kinds of fish, and their placement is random. Celes, not being able to walk into the water, must wait for them to come close to the shore before she catches them. This forces the player to make snap decisions; is it worth waiting at the shore for a particularly tasty fish to swim up, or should you save time by catching a less valuable one, then running back and hoping the layout is better next time? It sounds by turns tedious and irritating. And so it is. But because the player is forced to struggle against overwhelming odds in order to keep Cid alive, because there are no other characters on the island, because there is (literally, since his health declines regardless) no time to pause for breath, we’re involved in the relationship anyway. It doesn’t matter that the dialogue is ridiculously overwrought (”Hack, wheeze… I’m not long for this world”) or that “Grandfather is dying because he took care of you at the expense of himself” could only be more trite and sentimental if it involved puppies, because the player has a genuine stake in what happens next. We don’t need to be shown or told that Celes is frantically trying to keep him alive and that the world has gone to Hell; we experience it directly. You get the horrible feeling that were it done today, we’d get a twenty minute unskippable CGI sequence followed by Cid dying regardless, probably in slow motion with full orchestral accompaniment.
This approach goes beyond simple story events and into the actual game mechanics themselves. Each of the twelve major characters has a unique combat ability, but these aren’t arbitrarily assigned and help reinforce that character’s personality. In later games it’s de rigueur to have a similarly large cast whose can all draw from the same “pool” of abilities, but more often than not this simply renders the least-used characters pointless. If you need to steal a certain item in Final Fantasy VII, for example, you can just stick the “Steal” ability on one of your strongest characters, even if he happens to be a large, slow, clumsy man with only one hand. There’s a character that the story tells us is a thief, yes, but why bother using her when anybody else you happen to pick up along the way can do the job just as well…? The story and the game are doing different things. Final Fantasy VI, however, gives us a thief who’s the only character capable of stealing (overpowered hidden ones don’t count), a samurai who’s the only character capable of using fancy sword techniques, a wizard who’s the only character capable of accessing a certain spells… These abilities aren’t complicated, either; they’re written on the command window in big, bold letters, signaling to the player that THIS IS WHAT I DO. Even if a character’s ability is mostly useless, we’re never confused as to who they are and what their place in the world is. By defining the characters through how they relate to the act of playing the game, the cast remain well-defined and memorable where they would have seemed superfluous had the focus been entirely on their dialogue. The magic system works in the same way. The crux of the story is that the Empire is using magicite, the remains of magical creatures called Espers, to infuse its soldiers and war machines with magical power, but this is also how we teach our characters spells in-game, so the threat isn’t an abstract, it’s something we have to deal with if we want to succeed. Even if you ignore the dialogue completely, you can pick up the story simply through the act of playing it.
We should also consider how little the gameplay of Final Fantasy VI repeats itself. While the core of the game remains “Explore dungeon, encounter monsters, kill them”, we rarely do this in precisely the same way twice. We begin the game riding inside nigh-on invincible robot armor, nonchalantly storming a town and slaughtering the defenders without breaking a sweat. Our next objective, however, is to break out of the town, now robot-less, vulnerable and armed only with a knife. When that’s done with, we’re asked to control three groups of characters simultaneously, using them to defend an unconscious woman from advancing enemy troops. It’s not until this part of the game is over that we experience our first “straight” dungeon, and that’s immediately followed by white-water rafting through a maze of rivers. A later section takes place in a town occupied by the Empire, where the objective is to gather information through the use of disguises, rather than confronting the enemy head-on. When some characters are trapped on a haunted train, what could have easily become a combat-heavy slog from the caboose to the engine is livened up by little touches like friendly ghosts who’ll join you, a dining car where you can order food and puzzles requiring you to derail cars. All of this takes place within the first third of the game, and it’s more variation than we got in the previous five games put together. “Variation” is the key word, here: These aren’t gimmicks, they’re simply different ways of employing the core gameplay we’ve been dealing with since we started. Instead of relying on contrived, simplistic minigames to break up the monotony, Final Fantasy VI simply avoids being monotonous in the first place.
But most of all, the success of Final Fantasy VI is due to its ability to be all things to all people. The compulsory parts of the game are easy, with weak monsters and simplistic puzzles, while anything complicated is on the periphery for the player to explore at their leisure. The ability to control how the characters’ statistics increase through equipping magicite as their level increases, for example, is not remotely necessary if your only goal is to finish the game, but is immensely rewarding if you learn to exploit it. The best weapons, armour, spells and items are also found by ignoring the story completely and experimenting, but again, this isn’t strictly necessary, and if something’s too difficult or confusing then you can easily ignore it in favor of something else. The people playing purely for the story are happy, the obsessive collectors are happy, the algorithm freaks are happy, and so is everybody in between. You can’t say this of later games in the series, where combining items and spells together, drawing abilities out of weapons or navigating mazes using magic spheres was required to survive for any length of time.
Because this is Cerise, a brief note on the female characters: It’s traditional for Final Fantasy games to feature a virginal young woman with healing powers and some connection to an extinct race, but who ends up getting sidelined in favor of the hero being angsty / rescuing her. The obvious candidate in Final Fantasy VI is Terra, a half-human half-Esper who acts as a bridge between the two worlds, only… She’s never depicted as especially pure or nice, her magical speciality is fireballs rather than healing, and while she’s pursued by a few of the male characters, she ends the game happy on her own. Most interestingly, she’s also the one who gets to fall over and have cryptic flashbacks to her Dark Hidden Past, which is traditionally the domain of the male lead. Come to think of it, Final Fantasy VI doesn’t even have a male lead - female characters are scarce, but they’re the ones whom the game revolves around.
Article © May 2008 by Richard Pilbeam.
By Olivia Luna
Can you believe we’re already celebrating the first anniversary of Cerise? One year ago this month we launched Cerise with the goal of “Getting Noticed in Gaming.” A year into our project, how are we doing? Let’s take a look back at some of the exciting things we’ve accomplished this past year, as well as look forward to what we’ve got in store for the future!
Last summer, in the early days of Cerise, we kicked things off well with some exciting interviews and the introduction of some of the features that have become mainstays of each issue of Cerise, such as the Gamer Stories, Retro Reviews and our regular columns.
October was a momentous month for Senior Editors Robyn Fleming and Andrea Rubenstein. Robyn represented Cerise in “Women in Gaming,” an event hosted by the Xfire Debate Club. Meanwhile, Andrea received notice that she was accepted into HAL, a noted game design school in Osaka, Japan. Make sure to stop by their respective game blogs, launched under the IRIS banner in the past year: Robyn Can’t Jump and The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student, which are joined by Staff Writer Latoya Peterson’s Gaming in the Media blog.
One of the most exciting developments for Cerise over the past year has been to see how our articles are received by others, and what kind of impact they’ve had. So far, articles that we’ve published have been linked on Wikipedia, reprinted on other blogs, sites and magazines, translated in multiple languages and used in college curriculums. We’ve been asked to participate in podcasts, contacted by filmmakers and approached by gaming companies for reviews—all of this in just one year! Phew!
With each passing month comes a rise in Cerise readership, with increased traffic here and on the forums. The number of unique hits we receive at Cerise grows exponentially as time passes—they’ve more than doubled in recent months. More and more gaming companies are starting to take note of the work we are doing here. Just this past month Robyn traveled to Los Angeles as a member of the press invited by Wizards of the Coast to attend a preview of the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
Coming up on the horizon for Cerise, editors Robyn Fleming and Olivia Luna will be participating on several panels at this year’s WisCon, including “Gender in Virtual Worlds” on Sunday the 25th at 11:30am. We’ll also be co-hosting a “Capes and Consoles” party with Girl-Wonder, so if you’re attending WisCon this year, make sure to come by and join us Saturday night the 24th in Room 263. In addition to food, drinks, games and music, we’ll be holding a prize drawing and selling Cerise swag. We encourage party-goers to come dressed up as their favorite game or comic book character—we don’t want to be the only ones cosplaying!
Thanks for a fantastic year everyone, and let’s continue to look forward to the bright future of Cerise!
Article © May 2008 by Olivia Luna.
By Olivia Luna
When we asked members of IRIS over on the boards to tell us what the site has meant to them, I started to think back on my time spent here in the past year and what effect it has had on me. I first wandered over to IRIS from a link posted on Kotaku, of all places, sometime in March or April of 2007. I’d been reading Kotaku daily for about half a year or so at that point, and was regularly dismayed by the extreme amounts of sexism (not to mention racism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) spewed forth by both the commenters and editorial staff at the site. I wanted to keep up to date on games and talk to other people about them, but trying to wade through the misogyny at Kotaku was an exercise in futility and the prospect of trying to engage with some of the offensive things was disheartening. Better to keep my mouth shut and head down and not make waves where someone like me, a mixed queer feminist, wasn’t wanted. Finding IRIS in the midst of all this, a safe haven in the middle of the dominant and overwhelmingly sexist mainstream gaming culture was like a breath of fresh air. Cliché, I know, but how else can I describe it? It was such a relief to find other gamers, gamers who loved the hobby but were sick of the culture surrounding their hobby, gamers who were critical of the games that they loved even while playing them. Finally, other gamers that I could relate to. Finally, other gamers who understood. IRIS instantly felt like home to me.
Since my initial introduction to IRIS over a year ago, I’ve experienced significant growth in my understanding of the way oppression operates not only in games and gaming culture, but in other areas of life as well. Meeting the other progressives at IRIS and poking around through the directory opened my eyes up to a plethora of feminist blogs, sites and communities online that I hadn’t even known existed. If I had thought to look for these sorts of things before I might have found them prior my introduction to IRIS, but you know it just hadn’t occurred to me to do so until IRIS first put the combination of feminism, games and the internet together. Reading all of the brilliant things that were being said in critique of pop culture on the internet has helped me hone my own ability to articulate my feminism and the way I experience the world. I continue to learn every day from the work of online progressives, to whom I will always be indebted. I can only hope that the work that I do through IRIS/Cerise may have a similar impact on other women and/or feminist gamers out there, looking for community in a hostile culture. This desire to make a difference for others, the way IRIS and the rest of the feminist blogosphere have done for me, is what motivates my continued contributions to this magazine and this site.
Without veering too far into TMI, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the other significant effect that IRIS has had on my life: I met my partner (going on six months!) through the IRIS Network last year. If for no other reason than that fact alone, IRIS will always be a special place for me. <3
Article © May 2008 by Olivia Luna.
Welcome to the Back Page! This is where we publish the odds and ends that our readers send in, from artwork and writing, to shout outs, thoughts on gaming, and whatever fun and silly things we can come up with. If you have something you want to show off to the rest of our readers, head over to our submissions page and fire off an e-mail to us! (more…)
By Latoya Peterson
In Australia, a game called The Coolest Kid in School is being billed as “Grand Theft Auto for Girls.” The gameplay revolves around risky teen girl behavior, prompting your in-game doppleganger to take drugs, practice cutting, play around with sex, and “lie, bitch, flirt your way to the top.” After checking out some of the game play, I can definitely say this is nothing like Grand Theft Auto.
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By Robyn Fleming
I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was six or seven years old, and have been a feminist for about that long. It’s easy to imagine, then, how thrilled I was to see steps towards greater inclusion of women – as both characters and players – in the 3rd edition source books for D&D, and with what excitement I have watched the continuing development of the D&D franchise in recent years. D&D’s earliest incarnations were rife with casual sexism, but since the franchise was taken over by Wizards of the Coast there has been a visible trend towards inclusion and gender equality. Feminine pronouns have been utilized in sourcebooks, female characters have been used as archetypes, and while some regressive, chain-mail-bikini-esque artifacts have remained in the art and writing of some newer D&D products, Dungeons & Dragons as a whole is getting better and better from a feminist perspective.
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By Karen Healey
When I was a kid, I made up stories for my siblings and the neighbourhood kids we could press-gang into participating by the hour. Let’s Pretend was by far and away my favourite game, second only to reading as my favourite activity. We hunted down dinosaurs, enthusiastically swung sticks at each other in pirate battles, saved ourselves from floods of molten lava by jumping on the bed and, in possibly my finest hour, prevented alien plague infection by eating most of my friend’s stash of M&Ms.
I do exactly the same thing now, only I call Let’s Pretend “writing”, and I supply my own M&Ms.
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By Melissa Velte
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix, PSP, 2008
After sequels that, while met with a general positive response, did not thrill as the original 1997 Playstation title, Crisis Core brings hope for a game that will finally recapture Final Fantasy VII’s appeal. This PSP title again takes the series away from turn-based gameplay, introducing fans to the action-RPG.
For the devoted fans who just want to know now, this game easily meets the standards of its predecessor and is an excellent addition to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the PSP.
I’m a hardcore FFVII fan and played it so many times I lost count; Crisis Core is the reason I own a PSP. Anticipation was sweet, but not comparable to the excitement of plunging into a worthy game. Fans will encounter many familiar places, people, and allusions: a gratifying balance of old and new. Seeing even a small portion of the original remastered is enough to make me want to pull out the PS1 game yet again. Ah, nostalgia!
Story
Crisis Core’s story revolves around SOLDIER, an elite group of combat experts working for the Shinra Electric Company. Shinra controls a good portion of the world through its base in the cyberpunk dystopia Midgar, and is branching out by building reactors in rural locations. The game follows SOLDIER member Zack Fair, who was a minor (though significant) character in FFVII, as he rises through the ranks and gains the trust of SOLDIER’s most renown member, the legendary Sephiroth, antagonist of FFVII.
Familiar plot points from FFVII are revisited from a new perspective, and are excellent additions to the story. Anybody familliar with the story of FFVII knows of Zack’s fate, but foreknowledge of the ending does not detract from the story, as the focus is on characters and events within SOLDIER that we were previously unaware of. Following the plot may require more attention from those new to FFVII’s world, but all details are explained in some manner.
The ending is a beautiful, emotional, and a unique combination of all the game’s mechanics. Superbly done. I wish I could describe it further without spoiling it; by far one of the best conclusions to any Final Fantasy, and easily tops other games as well.
Gameplay
Crisis Core deviates from standard turn-based RPG battles, a necessary change given that players now control one character throughout the entire game. Zack’s equipment is fully customizable to suit your style of play, whether it’s offense, defense or the use of magic.
Despite all these options, almost all battles play the same way. I found myself using the same equipment setup until I forced myself to try something new; basic attacks with occasional offense and healing magic will get you through most of the game. There are many useful skills available, but once you find your niche there’s not much reason to abandon it. However, gameplay did not annoy or bore me; the quickness battle and the joy of mowing through bad guys outweighs the repetition.
Digital Mind Wave, a new mechanic, creates more interesting gameplay. It consists of three numbers and character portraits, and spins during battle, periodically stopping and potentially granting bonuses. When the left and right portraits match, DMW enters “modulating phase,” during which a matching center portrait triggers a powerful attack, and matching digits increase Zack’s power. While this enhances a simplistic combat system, it tends to make many battles too easy.
Battles occur in predetermined spots, typically in the center of walkways or near treasure chests. At times, taking a step backward triggers a battle from a spot you just left, quite an annoyance until you learn to adapt. Zack moves freely in battles that occur in real time. Blocking greatly reduces damage (even magic damage), and dodging allows Zack to easily avoid large attacks.
Players can also access extra missions at save points. Rewards include accessories, items, and more powerful magic. Some missions also have a small story, and reveal interesting tidbits of information about the world and chararcters. As the missions increase in difficulty, players may need to draw upon more and more of their stockpiled magic.
The RPG elements easily break up the combat, and offer side quests far more interesting than the extra missions. Players can glean quite a bit of detail by taking a few minutes to explore. Zack periodically receives emails from his friends, giving additional layers to his character.
Crisis Core is extremely mobile. Literally everything in the game can be paused, and the lengthy DMW animations can be skipped entirely. The extra missions provide hours of additional gameplay, their short length making them perfect for traveling.
Graphics and Sound
Everything looks spectacular. The FMV cutscenes are of comparable quality to the Final Fantasy movie Advent Children, the environments and in-game graphics match or best current PSP games. Square Enix renews their renown for excellent visuals with this title.
Characters move and show emotions fluidly and believably, worlds away from the cumbersome, low-polygon models of FFVII. Environments feel too large at times, though the open space is required for some battles. I came to hate the “Shinra Basement” area after about three missions; the open halls, stairs, and rooms of nothing make it the epitome of tedium.
Takeharu Ishimoto’s score captures the essence of the story, environments, and mood. Some of Nobu Umatesu’s tracks return through excellent remixes of the original versions. Fans will also recognize a couple tracks from the anime Last Order. The soundtrack contains several heavy metal pieces, which compliment the combat as well as the character of Zack. Most of the cast retains their voice actors from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and they deliver their lines well despite some of the dialog being oddly-phrased.
Overall
Excellent presentation and story drive this title through fun but repetitive gameplay. Zack’s compelling story leads directly into the events of Final Fantasy VII. The new characters fit in seamlessly in and enrich the history Shinra and SOLDIER, adding even more depth to one of the best-loved RPG worlds. Both fans and new players will find Crisis Core a well made, highly satisfying RPG experience.
Article © May 2008 by Melissa Velte.
By Robyn Fleming
For the thirteenth Craft Check column, I thought it would be fun to go back and revisit all of the crafts featured in Cerise this year and share some ideas for elaborations and variations. So if you’ve tried some of the crafts and want more, or if you’ve been holding off and waiting for more inspiration, be sure to check out all the ideas in this column!
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Compilation copyright © 2007 - July 20, 2008 Cerise Magazine.
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