Monday, June 20, 2016

Happy 19th Anniversary, Final Fantasy Tactics

I.
The March of the Black Queen


It was over four hundred years ago.

In those days, recall, that our continent of Loar largely consisted of a kingdom that we then also called Ivalice; a kingdom separated into six regions all too soon to be unified by the great hero who began Ivalice's next “golden age.”

In the continent's center lay Lesalia, the royal seat; the others branched from that center, be it Fovoham to the north, proud Gallione to the west, broken Zeltennia to the east, or Limberry and Lionel to the south west and south respectively. These were political divisions, rather than geographical; but in spirit if not in deed they all carried three great similarities: they answered to the Royal City of Lesalia and their king Ondoria III, they all knelt before the Church of Glabados, and they were all desperately poor. For in that time, the kingdom had not yet recovered from the scars of The Fifty Years' War with Ordallia to the east.

This last fact was held in contention for some years, as written documents of the era were largely recorded by learned men and the nobility – and there was no greater time to be noble than in the wake of a war. Coffers were overstuffed in the case of those who sent others to fight. One particularly noteworthy example was just months before the official declaration of the end of hostilities—the church, a wealthy body itself, hosted an opulent baptism ceremony for the newly-born royal baby, and it seemed all of Ivalice's ruling class was in attendance, even as many fields lay fallow and bones bleached in the dried Lake Poescas beds.

***

The wheels turned, and the goldleaf herald, the twin lions, emblazoned on the carriage's door was spattered with mud. Inside, a powerful woman brushed her long blonde hair back behind her without tipping her crown; she prepared to seize her destiny, unknowing that it would seize her instead.

The War of the Lions began and ended each with a miracle.

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Rebuilding: SMTIV, Part Four (The Rot)

I've been occupied with other matters - The Singing Mountain is one, my illness is another - but I wanted to say more about this before I left it abandoned.


Shinichiro Watanabe, on the creation of Samurai Champloo.

To address the plot of SMTIV, we have to acknowledge one of the biggest elephants - a real Girimehkala - in the room with this game; that it is, to put it most kindly, politically narrow-minded.