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  • Does Final Fantasy XV’s Supplemental Material Go Too Far?

    In the weeks since i started playing Final Fantasy XV, I’ve had a number of conversations with fellow players. What did you think of the story? Did you like the characters? Were you okay with the switch to real-time combat? Why does Prompto take photos of his friends getting mauled by exotic beasts? But one question that keeps coming up is whether or not somebody watched the game’s supplementary materials: the CGI movie Kingsglaive, and the anime Brotherhood. Both of these help fill out the world, delving into lore and backstories that further the player’s understanding of the game. They vary in quality (Brotherhood is very good, Kingsglaive is merely passable), but are instrumental in understanding a few of the game’s major plot points.

    On the one hand, the release of supplemental entertainment outside of the original work’s medium is not a new phenomenon. The print industry, for example, frequently churns out books meant to expand on the worlds of popular movie, TV, and video game properties. The Star Wars Expanded Universe, which was abandoned with the release of The Force Awakens, is one particularly popular example. Another is the series of Halo novels, based on the popular video game franchise. These books filled in the game’s universe and became a huge success with fans. In addition to these extensions, there are novelizations of popular movies, which has proven to be an enormous industry in and of itself.

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  • Final Fantasy XV Review

    For at least a year, I’ve expected Final Fantasy XV to be a disaster. After the popular series spent an entire console generation disappointing fans with the XIII trilogy, the developers stated their intention to reclaim popularity by appealing to western audiences. Final Fantasy XV (formerly a PS3 titled called Final Fantasy Versus XIII) would eschew the elements of previous Final Fantasy games that had become unpopular in recent years. Menu-based combat, relatively linear designs, complex stat-based RPG systems…all would be traded for an open-world, real-time approximation of western RPGs.

    But every time Square Enix would show something from Final Fantasy XV, it was clear that they had no idea what western audiences actually wanted. Footage from the game screamed Japan, from the black leather costumes, to the anime-like banter between the protagonists, to the incomprehensible story centered around crystals and kingdoms and daemons.

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  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review

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    While being positioned as a departure from the mainline Star Wars movies, Rogue One has a lot in common with its cinematic siblings. It’s got the force, charming rogues, a sweeping musical score, and very strong divisions between good and evil. New protagonist Jyn Erso’s headstrong attitude and estrangement from her parents feel lifted directly from last year’s The Force Awakens, and nearly all of the secondary characters feel like mash-ups of characters or archetypes previously used in the Star Wars saga.

    This reliance on what has worked in the past is simultaneously one of Rogue One’s major strengths and one of it’s biggest weaknesses. The Star Wars universe continues to be incredibly satisfying on a level of pure spectacle. Iconic designs like the AT-ST, or the X-Wing, or the TIE Fighter, are just as exciting to watch onscreen in 2016 as they were 20, and presumably 39, years ago. This new film also gets what made the original trilogy exciting, with action scenes staying with the characters, maintaining a sense of scale and intensity. This makes the stakes feel more real and matches effectively with the more “lived-in” aesthetic of the original movies.

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  • The Last Guardian Is A Masterpiece…When It Works

    The story behind The Last Guardian is almost as epic as the game itself. After nine years of announcements, brief glimpses, delays, disappearances, re-appearances, and a platform jump, it’s finally complete, printed onto blu-ray discs, and available for download on the Playstation Store. Starting up the game is almost surreal, like meeting an old friend after having accepted their death.

    Lead designer Fumito Ueda, who was also behind Playstation 2 classics Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, had a lot to live up to with The Last Guardian, and in a broad sense, he did. When The Last Guardian is working the way it is designed to, it’s a peerless example of interactive, emotional storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s crippled by major bugs and performance issues that absolutely should have been resolved during the game’s nine years of development.

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  • Westworld Season 1 Review

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    Season 1 of Westworld wrapped up over the weekend, finally giving us a clear picture of the show’s reality…sort of. If you haven’t watched it yet, steer clear, because I will be posting spoilers below. However, my opinion of the show after the first 5 episodes is still, for the most part, how I feel now: its mystery was compelling and it has a lot on its mind, but for a show about the essence of humanity, it has a difficult time inviting us to care about its characters on a human level.

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