Coherence, Dissonance and Tales of Vesperia
When trying to characterise the phenomena that induced me to make a study of Tales of Vesperia, I fumbled with a variety of terms. ‘Gamey’ and ‘self-conscious’ were among them, but I eventually settled...
View ArticleWhat the Hero Cannot Save the Princess From
Tales of Vesperia is the story of a young man going on an adventure with a princess, so of course, at one point, she gets kidnapped and he has to ‘rescue’ her. As this happens about two-thirds of the...
View ArticleOf Maps and Men
Right from the very first lines of the opening narration, Tales of Vesperia emphasises how wild and uncharted its world is. Towns are only safe because of vast and powerful magical barriers; few humans...
View ArticleDog Time
‘World’ is, by root, as much a temporal concept as a spatial one. I’ve said before that one of the things that Tales of Vesperia struggles with is conveying the passage of time between its plot...
View ArticleThe World Trends With You
For a game that went into development in 2005, elements of The World Ends With You feel outright prescient. This was a time before Facebook or Twitter even existed (or at least, before they were open...
View ArticleWhat a Wonderful Genre
I sometimes wonder whether there’s a value in genre-based critique, particularly for a genre as diverse and nebulous as JRPGs. Looking at Tales of Vesperia means addressing the genre at large as well...
View ArticleWhose Silence is This?
Devon Carter's 'This Silence is Not Mine' stands as one of my favourite pieces of critical writing. It resonates with me because it points towards the novelistic understanding of narrative that I...
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Tales
I am learning to cry. Not learning to stage-cry. Not learning to perform crying, whether in honest fiction or dishonest manipulation. Not training a nerve pathway to bypass my emotions en route from...
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Final Fantasy XII and the Paradox of Final Fantasy
This is a transcript of my mini-episode for the Dead Genre Chronicles podcast (by the way, I'm on a podcast, check it out).------There is a paradox at the heart of what 'Final Fantasy' means in gaming....
View ArticleFinal Heroes
(Originally published Feb 25, 2016, at JRPGsaredead.fyi) A thought I keep having lately:What was the last Final Fantasy game with a male hero?I don't mean a male protagonist (Tidus) or a male viewpoint...
View ArticleTo Model Lightning
(Originally Published Mar 10, 2016, at JRPGsaredead.fyi)This post contains full spoilers for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.In Lightning Returns, Lightning is sent into the last days of a dying...
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The Top 10 JRPG Fish
(Originally published Mar 31, 2016 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)Fish are an essential part of the JRPG genre, and while recent entries may have lacked some of the sparkle of the JRPG golden age in the mid to...
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Some Thoughts upon the Occasion of the Announcement of Final Fantasy XII: The...
(Originally published on Jun 9, 2016, at JRPGsaredead.fyi)1. I'd genuinely given up on this ever happening.Until Zodiac Agelaunches, Final Fantasy XII is the only 'main line'Final Fantasy game to be...
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Dr Johnson's Sore Toe: Touch, Naturalism and Kingdom Hearts
(Originally published 9/9/16 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)In 1710, George Berkeley published Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in which he argued that everything that exists is just...
View ArticleYou Did It Again
(Originally published 16/11/16 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)World of Final Fantasyis a better critical reflection on the Final Fantasy brand than any thinkpiece I've ever read on that topic. It's Square Enix's...
View ArticleFinality
(Originally published on 28/11/16 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)The marketing campaign for Final Fantasy XV has been weird, right? Let's start with the obvious: Kingsglaive.Kingsglaive is a 111-minute CG film...
View Article3 Reasons I'm Not Reviewing Final Fantasy XV Right Now
(Originally published on 8/12/16 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)1. What's the point?The chances of anybody actually listening to anything I have to say about this game are, let's face it, slim. Big new releases...
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Written in the Land
(Originally published on 11/3/17 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)Blood and BoneAfter finishing Final Fantasy XV the first time, I wrote that I thought there was 'a story written in the bones of this landscape'....
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Why do you care if it's realistic?
(Originally published on 20/12/17 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)By far the most common kind of complaint about JRPGs is that they are 'unrealistic'– most commonly in their combat systems or character designs....
View ArticleTurns
(Originally published on 31/8/18 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)The recent resurfacing of the ‘is JRPG a genre?’ debate on twitter didn’t really break any new ground (it totally isn’t, by the way), but I did...
View ArticlePlaying Favourites
(Originally published on 18/9/18 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)My favourite videogames, in no particular order, are Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII and Tales of Vesperia. These are not the games that move...
View ArticleThe Night Seems Like It Won't Come
(Originally published on 26/11/18 at JRPGsaredead.fyi)Often – not always, but in the vast majority of cases – you read a JRPG best by looking at the journeys the characters take in it. Not any kind of...
View ArticleDead Genre Chronicles introductory listener guide
Dead Genre Chronicles was a podcast I did with Valori Carter and LeeRoy Lewin from August 2015 to September 2018. In it, we developed what we think is a pretty robust critical method and genealogy for...
View ArticleThematic Index
I've done some rearranging of things on here lately and thought it would be a good opportunity to pull links to all my critical work together in one place. There's an introduction to my old podcast...
View ArticleThe Machine is also an Audience
It gets hot, when you do something intenseSometimes it chatters for no reasonMine recently broke a fan,from clutching too hard at its bearingsSometimes it literally grades you,Or reports you to some...
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