Ep 95 - A Survey Course Into the Final Fantasy Franchise (Part 2): Connections, Community, and Why We Keep Coming Back

Last week, we looked at the various nuts and bolts of the Final Fantasy franchise to see what it structurally needed to be a member of the family. On this week's episode, we explore personal stories, connections made, and communities built over this landmark series of games.

STARRING (all handles from Twitter)

Aiden Moher (@adribbleofink)
Carson Clark (@DesireeKorrupt)
Josh of Still Loading Podcast (@StillLoadingPod)
Julian Titus (@julian_titus) of The Stage Select Podcast (@StageSelectPod)
Kyle of the The RPG Podcast (@TheRPGPodcast)
The Let's Play Princess (@TheLPPrincess)
Mekel Kasanova (@MekelKasanova)
Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel (@MadMonarch_DI)
Nate McLellan (@natedoescomedy79 on TikTok)
Ryan aka @GameswCoffee
Wade aka (@ProfNoctis)

SONG COVERS

Final Fantasy VII: Prelude (Harp Cover) + Pedal Harp Sheet Music by HarpistKT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZLJRVl8-HI)

Final Fantasy X - Sight of Spira - Acoustic/Classical Guitar Cover - Super Guitar Bros by Super Guitar Bros (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QeRS-DnC_8)

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Transcript

0:13

Last week we took our beginning steps into dissecting the elements of the Final Fantasy franchise, and in the process we discovered a host of crucial aspects, music, battle system, themes, etc. This week we're going to shift gears and discuss why it's endured for so long, and within that framework share some personal stories of connection, the surprising community found in a mostly single player game and why we keep coming back to this well of JRPG classics time and time again. Quick intro because we have a lot to cover, so it's time to load that last save, ensure an optimal loadout and avoid game facts for hence as we dive into episode ninety five, a survey course into the Final Fantasy franchise part two connections community. and why we keep coming back. I just want to finish this game. Okay, dad, I'm coming. Now, if you're new to this show or first discovered it through the Final Fantasy series, firstly, welcome. Thanks for coming by and thanks for giving the show a shot. And secondly, you may not quite know the whole aim of A Gamer Looks at 40. And the goal of this podcast is to not only highlight why things work, but shed light. on who they're working for, meaning personal connections. People have close relationships to movies and music and different art forms. For some reason, those connections to video games are just never discussed. And that is a big part of what I do here on A Game with Looks at 40 and what I'll be doing here for this entire Final Fantasy series. In that spirit, I figured I'd start with three really cool personal stories. from friends who love Final Fantasy and why this series has lodged itself within their hearts and their memories. Starting us off is the Let's Play Princess, followed by Kyle of the RPG Podcast, and then Julian of the brand new Stage Select Podcast. So, obviously Final Fantasy is something that means a lot to you. Why do you think it's meant so much to you, as you've, from starting from seven, moving forward? It seems like it has a personal connection, because you've played so many and you've really tried to explore the series. What about it connects with you personally? I think a part of it might go back to the Super Nintendo days, because I grew up with Square Enix. Not surprisingly enough with Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI. Not even a secret of Mana, but a secret of Evermore. And once I started seeing games like Illusion of Gaia at Blockbuster, like we talked about, it definitely became this thing where I realized I liked these RPGs, these bigger, grander stories. Now, of course, I still love the little short games as well. I love all games. But, right, of course. Once I got Final Fantasy VII and saw this almost perfect blend of sci -fi and magic, and I say almost perfect because I think six gets it down to a T, I just wanted more. Maybe it's because of... Again, the characters or the music. Maybe it's because of the different little things that happen in the game. It's not just sticking to one thing even within its own game. You have Chocobo Racing. You have the Gold Saucer, which is one of my favorite places in XIV. I can't not go to the Gold Saucer every time I log into XIV. The motorcycle, the snowboarding, there's just something. The fact that they are willing to try all these different things and somehow they all stick is so commendable. There's a very high level of craft, I think. I think that might be one of the through lines of Final Fantasy. There's always a degree of polish. Earlier this year, it wasn't actually last year, but earlier this year I played Phantasy Star IV for the first time because I never had a Genesis as a kid. I was never a Sega guy. I always had, you know, Nintendo stuff. And I never played a Genesis RPG and Final Fantasy Star IV is widely regarded as one of the best. How was it? It's good. It's no Final Fantasy. And that's kind of what I think I had to shed myself of was Final Fantasy Star IV is really good. I think the story's cool. I think the artwork in Fantasy Star IV is fantastic. And for patrons out there, there's going to be an episode about Fantasy Star IV with the one and only Greg Seward. in upcoming rolling credits. If you're a patron, just saying. And of course you are Phoebe. So you'll be able to hear all about it. But I sat down playing it and my first impression was, oh, this is cool, but it's not Final Fantasy because it's missing that extra level of polish. It's missing a bit of that craft. You know, in Final Fantasy, I know the cure spell is cure in in the fantasy stars, Rez or something, or you can only use like six letter character names. All sorts of like little polished things that Final Fantasy had already figured out are not there in the game. I like it a lot, I think it was a really fun game. It's hard, but it's good. But something about, there's a craft to Final Fantasy that for some reason no other RPG series in my estimation, and I don't have a limited experience, has ever matched. Yeah. I... I agree with that, even to the point that Final Fantasy, except for 15, I'm sorry, is polished in all the different little aspects that it tries to do, where some games fail to even be polished and there are only one thing. That's an interesting point, because you did mention in Final Fantasy VII especially, which seems again as your first touch point, everything they tried to do, works for the most part. Like, nearly, I mean, everything. I mean, even, you know, people complain about the old style graphics and the cinematics don't, maybe don't hold up because it's that awkward PS1 era. But I think still from an art design perspective, that stuff's gorgeous. You know, I still think the materia system is my, well, my favorite battle systems. I think it's great. The amount of customization is unreal. You know, I just, they, Final Fantasy, like you said, usually nails what they tried to do for the most part. Yeah. I don't know what to Well, maybe except for 15. I haven't played 15, so I don't know if I'll ever get around It's a high company called Luminous, and they made their own engine for it. Then they made Forspoken, which has also gotten reviews. And now they're completely dissolved back into Square Enix. Wow, they got reabsorbed into the monster. Yep. That's really funny. That's really good. They will be thrown into the NFT mines. Oh no, please, please, not the NFT mines. No, no, that sounds like the worst place to be. When you think about Final Fantasy, as far as story goes, you did mention that story also is kind of important. It has to have some sort of connection to crystals and magic and summons. What do you find yourself gravitating towards most in your favorite Final Fantasies? What aspects do you find yourself in the ones that you like the most or have the most experience or personal connection with? Like tactics, for example, is something obviously you have a huge connection with. And we'll talk about tactics. But... What, what about those ones that are your favorites? Do you feel like you connect with the most? Uh, boy, kind of hard to pin down, um, because they're a little different in ways. I'd say tactics personally is because it's off the beaten path of the rest. Um, growing up for me being kind of Midwestern and a very, you know, um, Catholic area and not trying to be anti-catholic. It's a bit of an anti -catholic game. Honestly, it kind of takes the whole Jesus aspect and throws it on its head where their Jesus figure was a spy for the military and then becomes the evil deity at the end and I'm not saying that doesn't happen in other games where you know God is evil on all those things But it was just a little different for a Final Fantasy game for me So I really you know gravitated towards that story growing up in that sort of realm. Um, I For the other games, seven, six, 10, I'd say those are probably the best story-driven ones. It's really the characters that make it for me, seeing that people develop along the way. You can even go as far as four and say with the Dark Ragnarok, where you find these twists and turns that a lot of games just didn't have back then. And it may have been lack of data, you could only write so much on a 16 -bit cartridge. But at the same time, they took the time to put it on there and really made it something that was a little unique in that time. So I really think that's kind of what always brings me back to the games is finding something where you start with a character who's something and then he grows or she grows into something more along the way with the cast of characters surrounding them. If you had, if you met somebody who never played a Final Fantasy game, maybe they're interested, where would you start them? What would your starting point be? I get this question a lot and I always go with Final Fantasy X. Because I think graphically it looks modern enough. Like even if you're playing like the original PlayStation 2 version, like you're not gonna be like, what am I looking at? Right? Like they look like people and everything is very readable. Um, it's, it has voice acting, so you're not being expected to read like all the entirety of the dialogue, which can be a turnoff for some new players, especially in a day and age where everything is voiced. Um, and it's also like one of the few dedicated turn -based systems where it's straight up is like stops the game, lets you make your choices and then those play out. So it gives you all the time in the world to decide what you want to do. Um, where I think, I think the active time battle system. can be a little bit daunting for new players where they're just trying to get to grips with these menus because you're not used to playing a video game that way. Meanwhile, the enemies are just pummeling you because they're getting their turns. So to me, it's just the softest entry point. Individual games can become classics. Characters can become memorable. And stories can live on through the years and through the generations. But for an entire franchise to survive the length and breadth of video game history from 1989 to current day, it's gotta be doing something special. Which raised the question... Why has Final Fantasy as a series endured for so long? Starting us off on our conversation about legacy is gaming journalist and author Aiden Moore, followed by comedian Nate McClellan, and then Kyle returns to talk a bit more about enduring qualities. And so I do think like the sort of overall like aesthetics. of Final Fantasy are really strong, right? There are things that you come to expect from Final Fantasy, whether it has a sci-fi setting, whether it has a fantasy-based setting, you expect to have certain enemies, you expect to have certain spells, you expect to have certain combat archetypes that sort of define character motivations. And I think that somebody like Clive in Final Fantasy 16, you can trace him all the way back to... Cecil in Final Fantasy 4, right? They were both dark nights with like, you know, they were inherently good people with a lot of trauma that they had to work through that defined them, right? Like, I think that that's something that is really important. The way that like Final Fantasy embraces its tropes, I guess, is where I'm going with this. The way that it takes its tropes and its expectations and like leans into that as a strength rather than like a crutch. I think that's a really important part of. the final fantasy experience and then how it can subvert that kind of stuff. Like final fantasy 12 subverts a lot of the tropes that it, um, you know, that we, the, we generally have the like spunky young thief, like, you know, Zidane was sort of the main character in nine, right? We have the kind of spunky, you know, anime ask hero and hero and hero. Um, but in 12 he's like, Oh, he's sort of a passenger, right? Um, and that's really interesting. And, and in that game, you know, Ash is sort of the, sort of the narrative catalyst that pushes things forward. And so like Final Fantasy can also like embrace those tropes and really lean into them, but then surprise you by subverting them. And I think that's sort of crucial for me to enjoy a Final Fantasy game. And part of why I didn't like Final Fantasy 12 is I think that it tried to like its version of subverting the, you know, some of these tropes or embracing them was to try to make them. quote unquote, gritty, you know, mature. And it was like, okay, well, like, you know, Cecil was really interesting, but what if he says a lot, right? Like what? Right, right, right. You know, right. Right. And it's like, well, that's not any more interesting than Cecil in Final Fantasy four. What can you do to show me somebody who's actually more interesting than, than Cecil or a different take on Cecil, right? Who is somebody who leans into and embraces the dark night rather than like, you know, defeating them and becoming the Paladin or whatever. When you think about Final Fantasy 2, we kind of talked about some of the load-bearing ones and what makes the Final Fantasy a Final Fantasy. In your opinion, why do you think this series has endured for so long? I mean, it's been going since the mid -80s at this point. We're talking almost 40 years, 40 years now? Yeah, gotta be, almost 40. Why do you think it's endured for so long? You know, sorry, just to... Go back to one of your earlier questions, like what makes a Final Fantasy a Final Fantasy? And I didn't, I guess I'd never pieced it together until now. There's a lot of humor in these games. Like the Opera House in 6, 7 has a lot of humor as well, just like with Barrett. Like I always thought it was funny, like anytime the little expletive swears would show up, you know, like covering up. And I don't know why, like that was just funny to me. Even in like seven remake, there's little moments of humor like when Cloud is dressed up as a girl in seven remake and Tifa goes, wait, is that Cloud? And she's like, starts to say like, wow, you look really good. And he goes, I know, nailed it, moving on. Just don't talk about it. But I think it's endured so long because it has the ability to connect with almost anybody. You know, like you could sit down and show like someone like if I showed like my mom Final Fantasy 16 and I was like, this is what like, you know, video games look like nowadays. Like this, this is the spectacle. I think like she would be like, oh, this is cool. You know, like that's very impressive. And I think Square, I feel like they've always been kind of pushing the boundary of just like what, what they want to show players to get them in. to a Final Fantasy game. Even with Final Fantasy 1, where Dragon Quest before it was first -person battles, they said, no, Final Fantasy, your characters are on the right, enemies are on the left, you know? And like, they had this, these big, they could have big sprite artwork for bosses, you know, and like, see them from a different angle, and you can see your character move from right to left and like, hit the enemy. So I feel like they, it's endured so long because Square doesn't rest. on their laurels, you know, like they even Final Fantasy one to Final Fantasy two, they didn't just take final like it wasn't Final Fantasy 1 .5. They were like, Hey, guess what? Now you can only level up by using your abilities. So you want to get strength up, you attack, you want to like raise your magic, you're going to use magic attacks. You want to raise your health, get hit in battle, you know, they're just not content with sitting. and being like, hey, that that one worked really well, you know, like, let's do that again. Like in the Final Fantasy three, they're like, here's the job system, like, which is something like, you know, kind of introduced in one. But then they just blew it out in three. And then in four, they said, no, dude, all the jobs are now character specific. And that is like that character's motivation, you know. So they just don't like take it for granted, I guess, and go, OK, now you guys like that one. So here's, you know, the same game. You, you says in the experiment, no, they really aren't. And they're not afraid to evolve either. They're not afraid to, to, to, to, to move on and try new things, whether it works or doesn't. Final Fantasy two is a perfect example of that idea. Hey, let's try this out. Now. I don't think it's very successful. I think two is a better game than people. Two is a better game than the people let on or people believe. I think there's some really good ideas. Right. Yeah. It's still not great, but it's definitely, and there's definitely frustration and tedium in it, but boy, do they go for it with the story. I mean, there's people dying left and right, you have real drama, it's a real intense sort of situation, and again, it's great. And you said a word I thought that was very interesting was spectacle. And that is a great way of describing a Final Fantasy game, is the idea of spectacle, of this grand scale. this huge adventure of this top of the mark usual sound or top of the mark visual design, top of the mark graphics. For a while when a Final Fantasy game came out, that was the high watermark for graphics. That was the best that system could do at that time. And still to a certain extent, it's still pushing those boundaries. I like the way you said a spectacle. That is a big part of I think what makes Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy. Why do you think the series has endured for as long as it has? Yeah, so I think one big thing with Final Fantasy that they do well, and I can't say that a lot of games do this, is they continually update what their games are, especially the battle systems. Trust me, I'm an old school JRPG fan. I really like turn -based. I like pressing X a million times to just get things done. But I'm pretty proud of Final Fantasy for saying, you know, hey, we gotta do something new. These action games, these from games, they're really kind of selling really hot right now. We have to stay relevant, so now they're making a little bit more action -y RPGs. I think they actually made a really good strategy now that, I don't know if you've played 16, but 16 is very action RPG. Whereas Final Fantasy VII Remake is still an action RPG but has a lot of turn -based elements. So they've somewhat split the difference and are kind of going both routes in a new way, which is a really good idea, honestly. So I think that's a really big reason why they've stuck around. Some other smaller stuff, I guess. Final Fantasy is just popular. You know, a lot of gamers are millennials now. We grew up with it. It was really hard to find stuff in Blockbuster, Toys R Us RPG wise that wasn't Final Fantasy, that wasn't stock back in the day. So it's one of those things where like Final Fantasy is almost the tissue of RPGs or the band aid of RPGs. It's just the standard. So you have that name behind it. And I think, you know, even if you don't play a lot of RPGs or games like that, you know of Final Fantasy in the same way you know of Animal Crossing. It's just something that's knowledge to you. It's definitely become part of the culture and in a very special way, even if you... But it's not as culture focused as like a Mario or Zelda where, you know, grandma knows about Mario and Zelda. It still retains some of its mystique and some of its allure while still being a tent pole franchise. And it's an event. When a Final Fantasy game gets released, it's an event. I mean, especially back in the PlayStation and PS2 days. I mean, Final Fantasy X came out, it was everywhere. You could not escape it. The Seven was the same way. Seven was you could not escape a, well, I don't think GameStop or electronics boutique without a giant cardboard cutout of cloud on the front of it. You couldn't escape it. So. Even though I never had a PlayStation, I went the N64 route, I was Team Nintendo and I didn't get a PlayStation, I was still immersed in that world. Yeah, you remember how, do you remember that when it was, when came out, when Seven came out and it was literally everywhere? I mean, yeah, yeah, it was inescapable, it felt like. That was really it. You couldn't go to a single game store where... they didn't have at least five or six advertisements for it and it was at the front of every little window. The strategy guides were everywhere as well. I mean, you had to have everything of it. That was really it. And I think what you said about enduring because of innovation makes a lot of sense. I think that is true because I think at Final Fantasy, the most recent large series I did was on Zelda. And Zelda and Final Fantasy to me have very similar, pathways to relevance because Zelda's always iterated. It's always tried something new. It's always questioned its core. And Final Fantasy is starting to do that. But even when we got to seven and eight in the PlayStation era, it was already trying to push the envelope, not just visually, but with its gameplay, its mechanics. It always tries to do something different. I think that sense of adventure and evolution is really important, personally. It is. I mean, if you think about it, the first game is kind of just a D &D light system. And then they develop, you now we're doing you level up based on actions in two, now in three, it's more equipment. Now in four, we have characters. Now in five, we have jobs. It's always, always been somewhat updated. It's never exactly the same. to be outdone by his contemporaries, the professor Noctis himself returns to the podcast to talk about Final Fantasy's legacy, evolution, and how those two sides of the coin create one enduring series. That's a kind of loaded question. It is. And we've touched on some of the elements of why through this conversation, but I was maybe just a little... Yeah. Yeah, my answer is loaded as well. Because certainly I can say the stories and the human stories and all of that kind of stuff But my actual answer is they have adapted evolved and iterated And that is a dicey answer because there are a lot of people that don't like some of the evolutions that Final Fantasy has taken for example moving chiefly into full action combat with 16 a lot of people did not like that and yet there are newcomers to the franchise that say, this is the final fantasy that I love. This is the one that I hope continues for the rest of time. And you're getting people making those memories of 16 that we made a four of six and seven, you know? So their commitment to being the standard, not just in immersion and presentation, but also in gameplay and the way that they are going to adapt to modern sensibilities. You see the influence of games like Call of Duty, certainly, and developers said, we want to kind of capitalize on this Call of Duty stuff. And they made the corridor driven Final Fantasy 13 game, which was reviled by those that loved open world maps. But then in recent memory, people are starting to warm up to it as they do in the final fantasy cycle. Right? You know, you hate it and then you're like, it wasn't that bad. After all, but you know, with, with 13, they tried something new and, um, now it's kind of paying off because it paved the way for, for 15, which did some things great and did some things really poorly in a lot of people's eyes. And then 16, which again, kind of pushes that same thing. You never know. what kind of game you're going to get when a Final Fantasy comes out. And that's a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because it's going to stay current. It's bad because you may isolate and ostracize some of your former fans. But that's kind of the game of iteration, I suppose. But that's why I think that it's endured. They have been committed to not telling the same story the same way, but to tell a very contextualized, in -time story. And I think the evolution is important. I think I... Personally, I don't mind when a series takes risks because then it's up to me to decide if that's a risk for me or not for me. Exactly, thank you. That's for me. I'm allowed to make that decision and I respect the fact that Final Fantasy always is willing to try something different and try something new. Now I haven't played, I played the demo for 16. I have not played it to completion yet. I'm going to for this series, but I got some time for that. I need to take a break because I kind of powered through the pixel remasters and then I was like, all right, I got to take a break. And I liked it okay. I looked at gameplay, I'm like, this is not my thing. I'm not a devil may cry guy. It's not my thing. But I respect the fact that they're trying new things because I think you have to, you have to evolve. The franchise that lasts forever, like Zelda, Zelda is constantly iterating upon itself and making... new advancements and trying new things. And like you said, sometimes people just don't like it, but you can't, it can't stay stagnant because if it did stay stagnant, it wouldn't be around anymore. I don't think. That's exactly right. And I think Zelda is such a great example of that because they broke their formula with a link to the past to a degree. I mean, they broke it really with Zelda 2 going from a top down to a side scroller in Dungeon. And then going to a little bit more classic, but you've got, three dungeons, kind of a midpoint, and then six or so dungeons after that. And they kept with that for a long time. And then to bring in Breath of the Wild is like, what in the world are we doing? And yet there's still that same, like I said earlier, element of Zelda, even though the properties have been shifted around and interchanged. To that point, I actually think that Tears of the Kingdom does a better job of harkening back to the old games. than Breath of the Wild does, even though I think Breath of the Wild will be remembered more fondly than Tears. Though I prefer Tears personally. Tears came out just when I was finishing up the Zelda and I'm like, I need it. Oh yeah, you're done. I can't imagine. I spent six months in the Zelda world and yeah, I love Zelda. So it was not a bad thing to be, but sometimes you eat too many brownies. Kind of sick of brownies after a point. Totally understand. And listen, like... I thought I had just replayed Breath of the Wild before tears had come out and I I mean I put it probably another 80 hours into it on my second playthrough and then tears comes out I was like am I really gonna stick with this man 250 hours later I was like I just want more and I didn't even do everything I'm like I gotta put this down because there's other games I've got to like do some content and work for a living so And that's why I'm excited to do Final Fantasy after Zelda because there are a lot of through lines between, there's some similarities between the two. Especially when it comes to that evolution and that constant idea of, hey, let's try something different, try something new and see if it sticks. And sometimes it works and sometimes it's less successful or more successful, but you gotta take those risks. And I think they take those risks well. And I'll keep some of those core elements. Boy, that's what I love. about this series. And the fact that within a year span, we got Final Fantasy 16. And then in less than a month from this recording, or less than two months from this recording, we're getting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which is remake part two. And it is drastically different, fundamentally different than 16. It's going to be open world, continuous world exploration and traversal. You're going to have those goofy elements that were from Final Fantasy one through nine of like talking animals and the mystical things. None of that was in 16, but for them both to be Final Fantasy, it's like this is a variety gamers dream come true franchise. Cause it's like, whatever I want, I've got it. Like you have some former function of it. Yes. In 16 plus entries. Yeah. I've got, I can find a game for me. Just wanted to take one moment to thank my wonderful patrons for their financial support and backing. Starting with Greg Seward of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, the Let's Play Princess, Tim Knowles, Seth Sergel of the All -In Podcast, Terry Knair, Games with Coffee, BT Gobbles, Julian of Stage Select, and finally the one and only Fabulous Pete Harney. If you would like to join these wonderful human beings in supporting the show financially, mosey on down to patreon .com forward slash agamerlooksat40, check out the tiers and if anything strikes your fancy, sign up today. Thank you so much for your consideration and let's get back to the episode. Every time a Final Fantasy game comes out to the public, it's not just a release. It's an event. Twitter slash X is flooded with hashtags, the message boards are going crazy, and everybody with a YouTube channel or Twitch stream is broadcasting the game. It gets everywhere. So why do we keep coming back? It's one thing for a franchise to keep going even if it's just treading water. I'm looking at you. game I'm not going to say. Fill in your own blank on that one. But Final Fantasy for some reason continues to draw the attention of the fans that have loved it for either a year, five years, or their entire lives. In this section, we discuss why we keep coming back to this video game well. The Let's Play Princess starts us off, followed by author and show runner of the YouTube channel Distorted Illuminations Mike. and brand new friend of the show, Carson Clark. Interesting. So I've seen a lot of these. You've gone through a lot. Yeah. So my question - problem. Well, here's the question then. So what keeps you, what brings you back every single time? Like what about Final Fantasy always brings you back, regardless of system or what it is? You went backwards in time, obviously, the older ones. Why do you keep getting drawn back into that world? It's - The stories, the characters, the music, it's a little bit of everything. Those games are just so finely tuned for the most part. There are some flops in there like two is kind of like... But even then, the music in two is fantastic. Sure, yeah. Each game has something in it that will draw you in. Be it the characters and their interactions, the overarching story, the themes, the music. There's something for everybody, I think. I agree with that. What do you think makes what part of again Final Fantasy is tough because it's not like Zelda where Zelda has a lot of through lines, right? Every obviously every Final Fantasy game is different with some linking elements in there. There's usually a SID, there's usually a Chocobo, those kind of things. There's usually an airship. All right. All right. What do you think defines Final Fantasy as? Let's go start with mechanically. What do you think links those two things or makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game? Different than any other RPG series out there. I think one of the defining parts of a Final Fantasy game, and it might connect to how the series first got its name, is ambition. No game is exactly the same as the other one. Even direct sequels like 13 -13 -2, The Lightning Returns, are... Fundamentally, even if the battle system is slightly off, overall things are completely different. From 1 to 2, it became this huge overarching overworld timeline traversal thing. And then Lightning Returns just completely threw everything out the window and said, oh, leveling up, no, do quests, and those give you stats. They're always trying something different. Yeah, so what about Final Fantasy for you has kept it interesting and kept you engaged in this franchise as a whole? Even though the games are so different, they're so varied, what about it keeps you coming back for more? That's a weird one to describe because I think Final Fantasy, when you compare it to just about any other RPG franchise, there's something about it that's fundamentally different. This is going to sound a little cold to Square Enix when I say this, but after Final Fantasy 1, I think that's when they realized they could just put stuff out under the name Final Fantasy, and it was going to get eyes. Sure. Because you look at Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy 2. Mm -hmm. If you didn't call Final Fantasy 2 Final Fantasy 2 at the time, I don't think anyone would have thought it was intended to be a sequel of the same franchise as the first game. So on one hand, I think that's one reason as a series it's become so engaging, again, it's so varied. There's so many different things about it. But I think that also kind of created some weird views on the series. It's one those things, I don't know how much you saw like online discourse from like the Switch from the Super Nintendo to the PS1 or from the PS1 games to the PS2 but you saw a lot of people talk about like from going from the Super Nintendo to the PlayStation era people were like this just feels like an entirely different series now. Okay well what makes this a different series? I mean in a lot of ways going from the NES to the SNES era There was just as much difference between those two as going from the Super Nintendo to the PlayStation. What changed was Sakaguchi wasn't like a core part of the development team anymore. So we had a series where the only like real glue binding all the games together was they were directed by Sakaguchi. And as you know, most directors that get very prominent, they have a certain feel to the work they do. So that's what changed going from the Super Nintendo to the PlayStation. And it's also probably why a lot of people played Nine and felt like that felt like those older games because Sakaguchi was back. So it's kind of weird to sit here and judge Final Fantasy as a series because of these things. So when you think about Final Fantasy as a whole, and we were talking before on Discord, that you've played most of the mainline Final Fantasies at this point, why do you think this series has endured over the years? Why do you think it's still just as relevant now as it was when Final Fantasy IV or VI came out? In my opinion, I think it's the characters. It's the story, it's the characters, it's the music, it's the... it's the... Writing it's something just speaks to some people in a certain time and every Final Fantasy is somebody's first Final Fantasy and their story their their look their style is probably ingrained on It is ingrained in people what Final Fantasy is Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and I I think what you're kind of hinting on here is it's very personal because of those stories and those characters. I think that's kind of where we're landing on that is it's got a personal thing and everybody has that favorite and the one they connected to. Yeah, I connected to I think either seven or eight maybe in some ways. Maybe some in six or three with the music and some of the characters like My cloud mm -hmm Yeah, that's a the hands Final Fantasy 7 or or or or or to be honest squall and eight sure cuz it was so Introverted like I was interesting you to be outdone by his contemporaries, Julian returns to talk about Final Fantasy's visual style and why it continues to maintain an audience throughout the years. As far as visuals go, of the Final Fantasy games you've played, and you've played all the mainline ones, which one do you think has the best, or I would say the most, most interesting visual style to you? The most interesting, like, art design. Which one appeals to you the most? when you think back to all those games from just that visual standpoint, or we can even go a little further and say which one impressed you the most at the time, which one felt like that big sea change? Oh, well, that's, you know, that's really that kind of would change every time a new one came out for me. Like it was kind of always raising the bar, especially once seven hits because seven and I've got I've got some issues with seven. that we'll get into way later. But but one of the things about seven is that even at the time it felt like because you know, in the in that era, like the the indie movie had started to ascend, you know, like Tarantino and stuff like that, where that was like a thing. And I remembered thinking at the time that Final Fantasy seven felt like an indie like movie director got money and all of a sudden got to do like a big like, you know, big budget like blockbuster thing. And. But I think also then that became Final Fantasy from that point on, right? Like they were constantly having to one up that and they did it. I'm not saying that they didn't succeed, but I would definitely say like, oh, well, every time a Final Fantasy game comes out, that's like the best thing I've ever seen, right? But artistically, it's gotta be either six or 10 for me. Yeah. I really like the overall design aesthetics of ten Tetsuya Nomura art designs not withstand. I've got some bones to pick with him, but as far as like it's this very tropical setting and I like the design of the religious faction in there and the machinery of the Albed and stuff like that. I think Final Fantasy X's were like the first one where the world felt like its own thing. I guess, I guess seven has that as well, but I think 10 really felt like this very cohesive unit. But then six is just like head to toe gorgeous, like really like jaw dropping for the time and the capabilities of the system. And I can still go back and play like the original Super Nintendo version and be wowed. I'm just like, oh man, I can't believe they pulled that off on here. That's amazing. You mentioned a lot of different elements of Final Fantasy that I think are really important as a series, as series touch points. I think one of them though that you mentioned in that square also mentioned is beauty. Yeah. For as long as I remembered, and this was, this may have tailed off recently with the advent of kind of graphics and visuals catching up. But Final Fantasy games were always like the high point of graphical fidelity. When the Final Fantasy game came out, that was the high watermark for a long time. I think maybe up until like 12, maybe not so much 13, because 13, everything was starting to kind of catch up to it. No, I would I would put 13 in there as well. Yeah, I think when 13 came out, as long as you weren't playing the Xbox 360 version, which had some issues with the port. But yeah, on the PlayStation 3, it was kind of unmatched when that hit. Um, and if you play it on backwards compatibility on the Xbox now, cause they've done like some Xbox like series upgrades to it, uh, it still looks phenomenal. Um, I think 15 might've been kind of like par for the course with everything else that was around at the time. Like it still looked great, but I don't think that it was like, you know, like knock your pants off, like, like previous iterations have, but I think that was only because. everything else was looking so good at the time. Like, you know, and I think even 16. Well, I don't know. I some of that stuff like the spectacle of it, like just the size and scale of some of the stuff I've seen is mind blowing. But, you know, the fidelity, I think, of the actual character models is, you know, I guess that's the only bad thing about how far we've come with graphics. And I was talking about this on my show with Unreal Engine 5 is that. We're getting to the point where you can just straight up do photo realism and that's great. And I think that's that works fine for certain games, but I hope that we get like a few years of everybody trying to do photo realism and then saying, OK, what else can we do with this? Yeah. And then because I'm sure you'll ask this later on. And so I don't want to like get ahead of myself. But like one of the things that I've always wanted for Final Fantasy as a series is their Wind Waker moment. I want a game that looks like Amano's art was taken right off of the page and that's the characters. That's what I want to see. interesting. Yeah, that'll be so interesting. Do you enjoy video games? Of course you do, you're listening to this show. But what about comics, movies, and dang near anything else you can watch, read, or listen to? If that is the case then be sure to check out my sister show, Games My Mom Found. My brother from another mother, Mike Alberton and a rotating cast of fellow ne'er -duels deep dive into the world of nerdy pop culture with humor, insight, and generally good -natured shenanigans. Mike releases at least two episodes a week and has been doing so for over five years without a single break. Podcasting Iron Man or Borderline Crazy Person? Perhaps they're one and the same. Be sure to check out games my mom found wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. As we start to steer the ship into the port of this two part Final Fantasy episode, it's time to rein in all the other stuff that I talked about with guests that don't quite fit anywhere else. Think of this as an omnibus or goulash or something along those lines. Nate returns to talk about the transition from turn -based to action RPG. Julian shares some good old fashioned religious panic. And Josh from the Still Loading podcast discusses an amazing series he does on his show that you just simply have to hear to believe. Well, it's one of those where when you see it for the first time, it's very impressive. It's got this big visual style. It's very impressive games. It's not surprising you saw it and you're like, oh man, I gotta get my hands in this and dive into it. How was that going from more of an action gamer? to someone who played action games of the day, racing games, games where you have an immediate agency, I guess you could say, at full control, to a game that's just term -based RPG, lots of reading. How was that for you? It was very weird. The sensation of just like, I would hit X and choose attack. But then, like, Cloud wouldn't just immediately go over there and attack. So my brain was like, that's so weird, you know? Like, why does it do that? But then, like, I was pretty swept up by the story. Like, so, I don't know, by the time you go to, like, the second reactor, I was like, I don't care, you know? Like, I just want to see where this goes. And, like, I thought Cloud was the coolest MFer, you know, like, in the world. I was like, this guy's got spiky blonde hair. He wears pants I wear pants Giant sword. Yeah. Yeah giant sword. I don't got one of those but I swung a stick in the backyard the other day. So it's the same person Essentially, right? How old were you? How old were you during this time? Oh That's like nine nine or ten. Okay, that's like a really good time to get into Final Fantasy Seven that sounds like a really good Yeah, like a good time to get into it. That's because again, like all the, all the elements of it. It's just, yeah, just sounds like it's a good sweet spot, I would think to get into it. Actually, probably a little on the young side, because you still have to read a lot of the text. I mean, you're reading at that point by time you're nine, but there's a lot of reading involved. Some of the themes are probably a little more adult, but yeah, I can see you really getting into it as a, as a nine year old. Yeah. I mean, I still think Sephiroth is like the coolest looking dude. Like his design is just so enticing, you know, where you're like, I want to know more about this guy. Yeah. So like, even though I loved to read too, so I was reading like books and stuff. Like, yeah, like my favorite series is Zelda. So I wasn't too far. Yeah, I wasn't too far of a stretch to just be like, oh, now I have to read, you know, it was more just like, I don't have. agency, I guess. Like, I was more frustrated by, like, the enemy can hit me and I can't do anything about that, you know? Where it's like in Zelda, if you take a hit, it's like, oh, I was standing too close, you know? Interesting. You know, that's a really interesting point because in the Final Fantasy series, yeah, you can't avoid damage. You can't avoid damage in an action game, in a Zelda game. But you can't avoid, I can see that being really frustrating for someone who's never experienced an RPG. Wait, you mean I have to take damage? You mean I have to just sit here and let this imp take one piece of damage away from me, one hit point away, and I can't do anything? Yeah. I can totally see that being really frustrating. Wow. And then the concept of just like, because back then I was just a dumb kid. I just wanted to be at full health all the time, you know? Oh, yeah. So like after every battle, I was like going to a shop and just buying potions and just like heal it up. I love that. Yeah. Never using magic, because I was like, I don't want my MP. What if I need to like save it? You know? Yes. Which I guess that's a common thing from like talking to other people about games is like, oh, you magic either. You know, like, OK, I wasn't just some weirdo who was like, I don't want the bar to go down. Up until like three years ago, I was still the person where I don't want to use my 18 mega elixirs because I may need one. I may need all 18 for my boss. When, and very recently I've I'm teaching myself to play, use the tools, like use the toys that the developer has developed, like use them. They're fun. They're there for a reason. It's okay. You'll probably have more than enough for whatever challenge you're going to face. So I totally get that, that feeling of like, Oh my gosh, I can't, Oh, See, I still like I have let loose. I'll let loose if I know it's the final battle. Yeah. But like, I'm very hesitant to like like I will eat a death instead of use my one Phoenix down. I'll party wipe. I can do that fight better. I'm sure I could do. I should have something I could have done better. Yeah, that's that's kind of usually the. And honestly, now that I've recently played through one through three, and I don't want to get too far ahead, but they are very much the building blocks of Final Fantasy. And the culmination is four. It's kind of cool to see that one is like the very, it's like, it's the bones, right? It's the classes, it's the turn -based combat, it's the music. Some of the monsters, there's a handful of the monsters in there, but that's about it. And then two is like, we're going to tell this big sweeping story with characters and we're going to, we're going to, it's going to get dark. There's going to be like some really bad things that happen in this game. And then three is like, we're also going to, but, but, but two was too mean. So we're going to, we're going to, we're going to ease you into this. We're going to teach you how to play this game. We're going to show you what, what you can do in here so that you can enjoy everything that we have here. And I think that, that really. you know, you mix those three together and then you get Final Fantasy four. And from that point on, I think the series has its identity. Yeah, I think you're right. I think this as a building block, as like a foundational work is very successful. And I think that's it's that's where it kind of lives. I think it's really worthwhile for people to play if they want to see that foundation. Never got to play D &D again. Very strict religious household. Oh, OK. Is that one of the big reasons? Did that ever cause an issue because of role playing games? I mean, obviously, Nintendo is really steering clear of anything religious or was there ever an issue like, hey, what are you playing over there? Yeah, not for me, not for me personally. OK, but my cousin David and I, who were Jehovah's Witnesses, were visiting our cousins Danny and Tommy, who were Catholic. And we had rented Final Fantasy 2. Actually, I think, oh, no, that's what it was. They came over to David's house because they had the Genesis. David had the Super Nintendo. And so we were like, check this out. This is Final Fantasy 2 because, you know, we were like, this isn't Kid Chameleon, right? Like because we were very console warriors. Sure. And my my aunt, Susie, Danny and Tommy's mother walked in right as we were fighting Rubicon, who if you've ever seen Rubicon in Final Fantasy four, like he. If you wanted to create a character that looks like the devil, he sure does look like the devil and he's using fire and it's like, Oh, why did they have to walk in there of all places? And so final fantasy got banned from both households for a long time. Wow. Now I didn't have a console this time, so it didn't really matter for me. Sure. But yeah, that, Oh no, they came in. They came in at the wrong time. Yeah. Wow. I mean, look, obviously. You know, parents have their have their things and everyone has their stuff. But boy, oh boy, is that unfortunate because again, and Nintendo purposely avoiding that stuff just for that reason. We don't want to get involved. The religion thing. Yeah, we're wishing we're not praying here. We don't pray in this house. No, we wish we wish we hope we. Yeah, that's really funny. Oh, man. They lose the game. Was it like, OK, you just can't play this game anymore that you have? I want to say that like, cause it was a rental, but I want to say that like they weren't allowed to play it for the rest of that rental. Like I think it got confiscated. Wow. Mike, that's, that's nuts. That, that happened to me when I snuck a copy of nine inch nails, the dime would spiral into the house and I was 15 or 16 though. It wasn't a final fantasy game. My mom read the liner notes and the lyrics and she went, and she took it away and told me if I ever bring it in the house again, it was over. I just barely. I barely got my copy of Pearl Jam's 10 on cassette into the house. Like I showed it to my mom at Target and I was like, this is what I want to get. It was like my first like real album. And she kind of looked at it and she was like, okay, I guess. And that barely made it through. Made it through the parent filter. It's so funny. you So I came up with the idea. I'm a huge James Bond fan and this ties in with Final Fantasy, I promise, where one of my favorite podcasts is the James Bonding podcast with Matt Gourley and Matt Myra. And they always get a bunch of their friends on the show. And they did a series of episodes called the James Bond Fantasy Draft, where their idea was to take all the elements from the existing Bond movies and try to draft the ideal. James Bond movie. So which Bond are you gonna get? Do you wanna have Roger Moore as your Bond or do you wanna have Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan or things like that? So taking that same idea, I was like, well, how can I, I like this idea of doing a fantasy draft for things that aren't sports. So what could I do for video games? And I thought, you know what's varied enough is Final Fantasy. And it also kind of rolls, it doesn't really roll off the tongue, but fantasy draft, Final Fantasy, it kind of all works out really well. Yeah, that's a really good idea. I like that. So what the, what I, I don't know how can I put this? I love Final Fantasy and the ones that we're going to be talking about the most tonight are the ones that I love the most, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert lover, not an expert. And so I get four other people on who I wouldn't say experts, but there are four other people, not me, and they're the ones doing the drafting and I'm pretty much the commissioner. I'm the one organizing everything. And so there was a total when we did the first one, there was only there's 15 categories and now there's 16. So we do one for every mainline Final Fantasy. When Final Fantasy 17 comes out, I have no idea what I'm going to do for the 17th category. I feel like we're pretty much maxed out at 16, but we'll figure it out. So each category, kind of like if you're equating it to like fantasy sports, you know, in football, if you're doing fantasy football, you. You draft your quarterback, you draft your running back, you draft your wide receivers, the positions on the field. Well, instead of positions, you have categories. And that kind of leads into one of the questions you had on the outline here. What are the load -bearing aspects of Final Fantasy? That's kind of what the draft inadvertently, I don't think it was not intentional, but it kind of inadvertently answered. So actually, I should probably bring up. Cause I have a whole Google docs that way I don't have to remember all this stuff. No, go for it man. This is perfect. I love it. Yeah. Give me like two seconds. Yeah, totally. I love to dive into this piece of it because I think with your, with your idea, with that draft, you really are doing that. You're kind of breaking final fancy down to these core components and really examining what makes it work. So I think this is, this is awesome. I love this. So the categories that we had, Um, there was four, four of the 16 categories were party members. Cause I, you know, that's a classic final fantasy thing. So there, so there's four party members. There is a main villain, a secondary villain, an ultra boss, a battle system, a world slash setting console, because we couldn't really determine like graphic style, because if you do 16 bit, you know, final fantasy four looks very different than final fantasy six. There's a pretty big graphical update. And same with seven, eight, and nine. They're very different graphic styles. So instead of kind of going through all that, it's just, we go by system. What system do you want your Final Fantasy on? Then which soundtrack do you want? Which mini game do you want? Which plot twist do you want? Summon which SID, because you know there's a SID in every single Final Fantasy, so which SID is in your Final Fantasy? And then which vehicle is the 16th category? There are some rules and whatnot. So for example, the main and secondary villain, they draft from the same pool, meaning if there is a total of, let's say in the entire series, there's a total of 16 villains for the main villains, then the secondary villain also is from that pool. So meaning, theoretically, you could have Kuja backing up Sephiroth. Sephiroth could be the henchman to Kuja or something like that. in your Final Fantasy. So there's stuff like that. And yeah, so if you... And then for your main party members, we listed all the main party... All the main playable characters from the mainline Final Fantasies, with the exception of Final Fantasy 11 and 14, really, because there's not really like your... Those are MMOs, so it's not like there's defined characters per se, like there is in the mainline... In the other mainline entries. But yeah, so that's kind of like the basic layout of it. The only other thing that we do is like plot twists. I might change that around because we picked eight different plot twists randomly and I haven't changed them up. So when I do them this year, I might change up the plot twists and figure out some other stuff. But yeah, so those are the categories that we use and that's kind of inadvertently. Like I said, it was not intentional, but if you think about it, like what are the things that make Final Fantasy Final Fantasy? It's kinda those things. Now, when I first outlined the interviews for this Final Fantasy series, I had subjects in mind. I had thoughts about what I wanted to ask my guests, what I wanted to cover in a loose structure. But what I love about doing this show is I sometimes get the unexpected. Sometimes the conversation drifts into topics I didn't even know were pertinent to the game or series that I'm discussing. In this situation, I had no idea how much community factored into the early Final Fantasy games. Now I'm not talking about Final Fantasy 11 and 14, the MMOs, obviously those are built on communities, but I'm talking about the early days. Connections that were made with people in these largely single player games. I was astonished that I got even a couple of conversations about this, let alone six. Starting us off to talk about the friends made along the way is games with coffee, followed by podcaster and journalist, Mikhail Casanova and followed still by Josh from still loading podcast. Did you, so it sounds like you played a lot of Final Fantasy, especially seven with your brother. Um, was that a bonding experience for you with you and your brother? Did you play a lot of games together before that? Or was this one the first ones you really connected with together? Well, me and my brother, we had a, we had a very tenuous relationship. growing up. He was the favorite child and I was the continual screw up. So I'm joking bro. I love you, man. I love you. But yeah, no, we, I mean, Final Fantasy 7 was one of the first games we, like the two of us kind of played. He actually, it's funny too, because he actually got more into Final Fantasy than I did back in the days. But it wasn't until I guess I started playing Final Fantasy X that I guess 7 and 10 because and spoilers are interconnected between the two according to Tetsuya Noora who said that there's an interconnectedness between 7 and 10. I'm not sure again. Don't quote me on that. That's fine. But yeah, but it wasn't wasn't until after after 10 after I played 10. I was like, okay. Yeah, that's it. Final Fantasy is my jam. That's on. Game over, right there. That was it. So 10 was the one that really like, 7 obviously you fell in love with and you played 8 and then you were earlier dabbling. But then after 10, that was the one that really cemented it as, oh boy, this is now officially my jam. I need to now just eat all of this stuff now. Basically, yes. Yeah. But going back to my brother and me, we would still like swap over and like play the other Final Fantasy. It's like 8, we... We took turns with nine actually. We got that as a Christmas present. Shane got that as a Christmas present. My brother, Shane, is his name. And he got it as a Christmas present. And yeah, I gave him first crack at it because it's his Christmas present. I'm not going to encroach on that, right? Absolutely. That's the rule. You're exactly right. Yeah. So he got a stab and then I took my turn with it as well too. And yeah, so the two of us growing up, it's like, yeah, we were... We were kind of at odds with each other at times, but it was through Final Fantasy VII, again going back to that, that we both kind of bonded. That's cool. So you really credit Final Fantasy four with preparing you to, were you going stateside or? Yeah. Yes. So, um, so, uh, eventually like we ended up moving to, cause my dad is originally from Memphis, Tennessee. So he was in the air force and I ended up, um, with my siblings and my mom, we, we ended up, cause my mom is from Samoa, a small village. You guys have probably never heard of call, um, such a botella it's. Very small, but is what it is. And we left there, went to the U S complete culture shock. I'm over here like, yeah, I'm like, I don't, you know, and especially a mix. Cause so I'm Hawaiian, Samoan, Dominican and black. And like going there, I didn't fit in with anybody because they didn't know they like saw one like, what, what, what, where is that? And so what I had to do is like, eventually I found other kids that like games and then that was, that was my group right there. And it's so crazy. You look at how like neuroculture as a whole is so popular now. And it's just, you think about when we were growing up and it's like, you kids got it easy these days. I'll tell a story on the show eventually, but for this series, but I had a friend, my friend Ramon. in second grade and I played the first Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy I, it was, of its time I played it. And I knew one other kid in the class who played Final Fantasy I, and he was a popular kid, and I was not. But I was able to talk with the popular kid because I knew where to grind for ogres outside Crescent City, and I knew where to, I had the power, Nintendo power, so I knew all the stuff. So it was a bonding opportunity where I, there's no way I would have fit into that social strata. If not for final fantasy. I'm curious. Did you have friends who were like into final fantasy as well? Like that they're even okay. So they're all okay. They were all like, everyone was either into the, you know, the platform is like, you know, Mario's and the Sonics and such. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. While they're playing that I'm over here like, okay, you guys are talking about Sonic and Mario being great. Have you played sparkster? Have you played any of it? I'm like, come on now. It wasn't until interesting. It wasn't until because I had a really interesting time growing up. Like I didn't really. I want to say by fourth grade, my mom pulled me out of school and started homeschooling me, so I didn't really have a bit of a social, you know, any type of, you know, friends because everyone I was friends with, they ended up moving. So, you know, fourth grade homeschooled all the way up until graduation, graduated early. And then my mom wanted me to come out and be with the Hawaiian side of the family. in Hawaii, so which is why I came out here. And I've been out here ever since 2004. Okay. So, um, so being out here and then when I went to Chavannai University, when I went there, that's when like, I started meeting so many different people that were into gaming. And then my roommate at the time was like the, the top star jock of the basketball team. I'm talking about this dude was like seven foot two, looked like 50 cent. He was jacked, scary as hell. And I'm just like, and I didn't hit my girl's spray. Like right now I'm six two, right? Six two now. But when I started, I was like 16 or 17 in college. And like, I'm like, I want to say like five, four, I'm the shortest in my family. I didn't get my girl's spray. I got my girl's for it's super late. So I was terrified of him. And then one day I'm just sitting in the dorm room playing. I think I was playing, um, What was I playing I was playing Final Fantasy 12 and he came back from practice and sat next to me he's like, oh so, um Did you do that job board yet? I was like Oh, oh, oh, yeah, man. So he's like, so, you know, you want to get you want to get Vaughn in the party. You want to do this. You want to do that. And then we're going to go here and then you need to do this. This and this. I was like. You play Final Fantasy? He's like, bro. I'm like, hey, he's like, he's like, come to my room because I never went into his room in the dorm. Oh, man. Like a lot like just shelves of like games from like almost the NES era because he had all these consoles with him in. Yes. To like the 360 PS3 at the time. And yet he had a majority RPGs, fighting games and action RPGs like and he didn't really play sports games, which is crazy. That's funny. And you wouldn't, I'm telling you, you would never assume he was a gamer. He looks so big and scary and intimidating. And then like, it's so crazy. For real, like, and I wasn't popular. I was the unpopular kid at college and he was popular. But because I started hanging out with him, like, like anyone mess with me, I'd be like. I'd be like, hey, Kelly, can you come to the cafeteria right now? Because he's like, all right, I got you, bro. I'm coming down. And then he's like, so what you doing to my little bro over here? Oh, boy. I'm over here behind him like, what you gonna do? I, listen, I love that. I subscribe to that to this day. I just know people who know people. I don't want be the person who knows the thing. I got to know the people who know the thing, you see. I need those numbers in my phone. That is so great. I love that story You never know right you never know and that's never know. That's cool. That is so cool You're getting Final Fantasy 12 tips from the from the be literally the most popular person on campus and yet no idea Are you still in contact with him today like you still yeah, yeah, yeah We catch up like a couple times every year and it's like he brings it up. He's like, bro, you know, it's been like He said, you know, it's been like 20 years since we started college. I'm like, don't remind me of that. I don't want to know. I don't want to know that. I don't want to know. That's an interesting piece of it because as I'm having these conversations, when people think about Final Fantasy, especially when they're not thinking about 11 or 14, which are the MMOs, they always think of them as singular experiences, that they're solo experiences, they're not co -op games. But so I am hearing so many stories of people connecting over these solo experiences. Like you just said, you. bringing your memory card over to your friend's house and you have these funny moments where you're playing the game together. I, you know, and this may be a harder, may not be an easy to answer question and maybe there is no great answer. What about these games do you think creates that sense of community? Because on its face, it shouldn't, it's not co -op, it's not GoldenEye or Mario Kart where you're playing with your friends and, and you know, messing around. There are these solo experiences, but I am hearing so many stories of people having communal experiences in these solo games. So what do you, just as I toss that out, like what do you think? So I don't know if I have a perfect answer for it, but I do at least have an answer. I'm actually gonna reference a friend of mine. He wrote a book, his name is Aidan Mower. This is not, I did not intend to shout it out, so it's not like he, he doesn't pay me to plug his stuff. And Aidan's been on the show, so he's been on the show. He wrote a book, Fight Magic Items. And in that book, he talks very, he talks, there's a whole chapter dedicated to him talking about playing JRPGs with friends where they would literally all bring their tube TVs together in the same basement and play a JRPG that had just come out and they would marathon it together. You know, they would stay up all night playing their solo games, but together. And I think, To answer your question, I think the reason stuff like that even happens is because these games take you to a different world other than your own, and it's always fantastical and interesting, and the characters are interesting, and the worlds are interesting, both visually and also in terms of just the story that they try to tell. One of the things Final Fantasy is synonymous with are good stories, whether they hold up now or not, but like people still talk about Final Fantasy 6, people still talk about Final Fantasy 7. I know obviously because the remake series is coming out, but even so people remember the stories from Final Fantasy 7, 6, 4, even 4. I remember a lot of people, like especially a little bit older than me, that's like their game where they, they kind of like what 7 was to me with realizing like, oh, you can have a story like this. That's what 4 was to like a, like to... people just a couple of years older than me. And so I feel like it becomes this communal thing because when you and your friends get into it at the same time, then you meet, it's almost like watching a TV show at your own homes. And then the next day you go into school and you're like, yo, did you see this? Could you believe this happened? It becomes this communal thing, whether you're there with each other or not, because you're reporting back to each other the next day. It's... a group of friends who all have a shared interest who report back to each other the next day to see like, how far did you get? What did you see? Like what, what things are you trying out? Oh, that does, that works really well against these, these enemies. Okay. I'll have to try that out next time. So it kind of is a bit of that, that a playground experience that people always talk about backwards, like older NES games and stuff like that, you know, learning the different secrets. It's a little bit of that. I would say I think that's where the communal experience comes from. And also like, there's a reason why people listen to gaming podcasts when you get that hooked on something and you have that much of an emotional connection to it, you want to meet other people who are equally emotional about this thing you love or have the same sense of enjoyment that you do. And to close out this two -part survey course in the Final Fantasy series, we have Kyle returning, followed by Aiden Moore. Speaking of Final Fantasy I and the early ones, when did you play those for the first time? The early ones, human 3? Yeah, so this is actually a story I can go back to III about, more for the view and all that kind of stuff. So III is one of the really, really important games for me that came out. I got into that one, I believe I was 19 or 20 when I was in college. So that game specifically was the one that got me into wanting to beat every mainline Final Fantasy game. And it was because I actually had a really good friend. There was actually a couple that I'm still very good friends with and we would just spend a ton of time together. Me and the guy in the relationship, we were both in the same WoW raid groups. He was the healer, I was the tank. So we just spent a lot of time together, played a lot of old games, all sorts of stuff. He was a really old school RPG guy. And at that time we saw that Final Fantasy III was having a re -release for the DS. Like, hey, you know, that's pretty cool. We should give that a try. Like, you like Final Fantasy, I like Final Fantasy. And he's like, dude, between the two of us, I think 12 was coming out pretty soon. We own all of them. Should we beat all of them before 12 comes out? And we tried. Boy, did we try. We did. But we tried. Unfortunately, the wow took over a little bit there. But but we ended up beating one, two and three over the winter through the summer that that year. And those are just sometimes like I just had a really good time doing that. I just remember sitting in this tiny little college apartment across from the park that had a disc golf. course on it and we would just sit there and we'd be playing games, watching six feet under in the background and just kind of hanging out and you know, wasting time. But it was one of those things, you know, you just find some good people to hang out with and some good things and you have a goal in mind. And from then on, I just, for some reason, like really wanted to beat a bunch of series of games with people. So after that, after you know, it's like, hey, let's beat all the Final Fantasies, which, still have to beat four and 12. Um, and I think I'll be pretty, pretty much wrapped up there. But, um, but yeah, I've done run -throughs of all the resident evils, all the grand theft autos, uh, sweet, it ends dynasty warriors. I did all the Zelda games a couple of years back as well. Just one of those things like, you know, it's kind of fun giving yourself challenges for games. Um, so I think three was really the game that made me realize that I liked. doing self challenges in video gaming more than, more than I realized. And it kind of got me into doing different challenges for tactics. Kind of looking into speed running, really breaking games apart, that sort of thing. That's really interesting. The three was the one. And when you went out and I'm always careful is make sure I'm seeing it's you're talking about Japanese three, right? The one that you released for DS. Okay, cool. So you're talking about that. The one I played when I played Final Fantasy III that re -released on DS, I couldn't stand it. I was like, I don't, and I love Final Fantasy and I was like, ah, this one I'm just gonna skip. And I only played it recently on the remasters, you know, for this show actually. But I think that, I find that very interesting that you, that III was the one that kind of flipped the switch and said, hey, let's, yeah. Yeah, and it's funny because you're right, it's not a great game. But it was just the fact that I had people who were like, Hey, you want to do this challenge together? And, you know, we got through and it's like, boy, that was almost as bad as two and two's pretty bad. Honestly, Tuesday, Tuesday. But, but yeah, we beat it. And it's just like, yeah, let's see. Well, let's keep doing this. This is kind of fun. So, so it was more one of those things that it was just, you know, like, Hey, it's kind of, it's kind of cool to. to do this. It's kind cool to have social aspects of gaming even in single -player games. And in like a weird way it kind of led me to, you know, talking to more people about it. I'd say like honestly it was kind of probably what led me on the way to being on podcasts and talking to people about games like this. Are you still friends with anyone in that old Final Fantasy crew? The people that you were? Yeah, so close to them. Chat with them every day like one of my like my best friend growing up like our kids are friends and it's so cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the time. Like and now like I'm talking to his kid about the games like his his son was playing Super Mario RPG, the remake recently. And so like, you know, it's just really fascinating to me to be at this place in our life where like the kids who grew up playing these games. are now adults with their own kids and seeing that sort of like pass along to the next generation. But yeah, so yeah, all of my friends from that time, like we're still, like we still chat on Signal daily and I see some of them, you know, a few times a week. Yeah. So that's fantastic. And like we still just talk about video games and Magic the Gathering. Same stuff we were talking about in high school. Yeah. That's awesome, man. I love that you were able to build those connections and build those bridges because... A big thing that this show tries to do, I'm not sure if you've listened to it before or not, which is fine if you haven't, but that's a big part of this show is that video games can create connections. And nobody real, people forget that. People think of video games as like this solitary thing you sit by yourself. And there's so many cool stories like you've been sharing, just of people connecting and bonding and growing. And that's what this show tries to, when it's working on all cylinders, that's what this show tries to do. So I'm really into that whole vibe, yeah. One of my friends, the one who I see pretty much a couple of times a week, he and I, like one of our core memories, like we were friends in kindergarten, then sort of got split up into different grade groups throughout close to elementary school. But then we were back in class together in grade seven, and that's when we really became good friends. And a big part of that was that we both had Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. And so we would we would just bring that to school and we would arrange to meet at school like an hour early. We grew up on a small island. So we were in a very small community, but we would meet at the school Where'd you grow up? On a small island off Vancouver Island. Yeah. Oh, thank you Yeah in Canada in British Columbia. And so yeah, we would meet like I don't I would walk or my mom would drop me off and I just remember sitting out on like the misty cold schoolyard like bundled up but like side by side again playing links awakening, which is not a multiplayer game, right? Like but I was just sort of like Like anyone who has kids will know about like, like side by side play writer, like, what is it called? Co. Co. Co. Coop. Yeah. Well, not even catch co -op, but like, like kids will just sit and they'll like play in each other's together. Like, yes, together, but not together. And so that's what we would do. Like we would sit there with our, our own Gameboys, our own copies of links awakening. and play together. And one of us would be further or not. And that really kind of brought us together. And then that extended through like then later on in high school, like I grew up playing games on a Commodore 1702 monitor, which was like, I love them, but they're also quite portable. So I would like haul it and my PlayStation to my other friend's house. And we'd like, we'd set up our TVs back to back, like my monitor is TV back to back. And we'd sit there playing Lunar Silver Star Story together like our own again, our own copies, TVs back to back so that we wouldn't spoil each other. But like, oh, man, play. Right. And like that kind of stuff was just like it's just like the games were never solitary experiences for me. They were always always something that was like a thing I was doing with my friends. And so from that point forward, it was just like it really just crystallized within me and my friend group that that this was what we were. We were. RPG fans. We love these console RPGs. And I just like I've since writing the book, I've run into a lot of people who are like, oh, I'm so jealous. Like nobody at my school liked video games, let alone like Final Fantasy. Like that's such a, you know, great experience you had. And for me, I was like, oh, that's weird. Like video games were like normal. Like they like brought like. various like grades together. And it was something that like, I was able to bond with younger grades and older grades with like it brought us all together. And, um, and so they were always something that were like, even the single player games were very social for me. They were something that was like, you know, a shared experience. And so I just kept going with that. And, um, you know, as I, as I grew up, um, I love books too. I went to university, uh, for web design. And as I was, coming out of university, I was like, okay, I need to do something with this work. So I started a book blog and it, I ran that for a number of years, it got quite popular and that was really fun. And I sort of started dabbling in a little bit of games writing there. But eventually after my first kid was born, I realized I needed to not sink, you know, hundreds of hours of my life into something that wasn't making me money. So I, I was like, okay, like I've written about books for almost a decade. Like, I feel like I've kind of explored that I need something new. I was like, I'm let's try games writing. I love games. And so my very first piece, like professional piece was for Kotaku. And it was a look at pretty much what we're talking about how a generation of science fiction fantasy writers, readers like myself were like just as inspired by Hirano, Sakaguchi, and Nijihori as they were by Ursula Le Guin and Tolkien. And that had a huge like, reception and was really well received. And I was like, Oh, okay, I think I can do this. Um, and you know, I pitched more stories and always sort of tying it into this personal experience, looking at, you know, like not just the games, but looking at people, people who make them, people who play them, um, and the communities who sort of grow around them. And that ended up just reaching a lot of people and leading to a lot of interesting stories that I've been able to chase down and write, and then culminating in, in this book that I wrote and. You know, the book is a direct result of some of these freelance pieces about Japanese RPGs that I pitched and sold to places like Kotaku and EGM over the years. And, you know, it just really allowed me to recognize how the experiences we have can help you tell stories about, you know, shared experiences. It helped me realize that, like, all of these feelings that I had are not uniquely mine. There are millions of people out there. who have those same experiences and you know, mine might be with Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, somebody else's might be with Final Fantasy 10 and you know, whatever, Radeata stories or something, right? Or Star Ocean and Suikoden. Or it could be, you know, Street Fighter IV and Super Mario Kart, but like the idea that like, you know, games can be this great thing that brings people together has sort of just helped me crystallize and realize like where so much of the... kind of joy and companionship in my life came from when I was younger. And being able to write about that and reach out to and beat other people who experience the same thing and write about them and help them tell their stories has, you know, has become such a joy over the past four or five years. you just about does it for this edition of A Gamer Looks at 40. Next week I'll be releasing a Tales from the Bargain Bin episode and then the week after that I have an awesome interview that I have been dying to release and I keep pushing up the schedule because I'm just that stoked about it appearing. I'm not going to announce who it is. I don't want to over hype it, but I'll give you guys a hint. It has something to do with Final Fantasy. music, orchestral music. That's it. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Be sure to come back in two weeks to check that out. And then after that, we're jumping into the games themselves. Thank you so much for checking out this edition of A Gamer Looks At Forty. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell that person across the street you haven't talked to in years. If they dig games, I think they will dig this show and all the fun nostalgia. that we discuss. Be sure to check out a gamer looks at forty four zero dot com for everything related to the show, including links to my socials, full series playlist and a whole lot more. And be sure to give me a rating or review on your pod player of choice. Help boost the signal and get this show out to more people. More people listening means more stories to share. And that's just a win win for everybody involved. Thanks again for checking out the show. And until next time. be kind to yourselves and each other. you