Gaming

ROLE PLAYGROUND | Looking Back on Final Fantasy XV

Was it Good? Was it Bad? Eh. It's Hard to Say.

Final Fantasy, one of Square Enix's flagship series, has definitely had its ups and downs in the last few decades.

We've had classics like FFX really make their mark in the gaming world even though it didn't age all that well. And then we've had really big stinkers - coughcough FFXIII coughcough. So, with its latest installment, Square decided to change it up with the latest installment Final Fantasy XV. A slightly more western approach than the series has taken before, and it does work, just not all the time.

THE GAME

In Final Fantasy XV, you take control of Noctis Lucis Caelum - a prince who is getting ready to get married and take his place as the king of Lucis. However, before the nuptials can take place, his kingdom is ambushed by an evil empire. Noctis and his friends, a band of merry (and also very sad at times) men, must travel around a vast open world and save the kingdom at all costs.

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THE GOOD

The game has a lot going for it. Its graphics and character design have taken a much more contemporary approach that the series hasn't had since Final Fantasy VII. It has also taken a much darker visual tone than previous titles, which gives it a more realistic feel. It has its high fantasy elements, and while it doesn't always fit, it is integrated into unique world (well, unique for Final Fantasy). Its open world environment also serves the design elements well - it feels fluid and expansive and very similar to our world in some ways.

Then we have the battle system - a hack and slash, fluid system that ditches the turn-based system entirely. It's not perfect, but it keeps the game interesting. Instead of having a set kind of spell that each character can learn, you must craft them and you can even run out of them. I prefer this kind of system - because it keeps the game fast-paced and I feel like I'm doing something. A turn-based game is too slow for me, nowadays, unless they really change things up with the format. So, I'm glad FFXV took a step in the right direction.

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THE BAD

Now, here's the thing. It has got the looks and there's something there, but there's also a lot of nothing. The story never really excited me as much as everything else about the game. It was weak - and while the characters were a high point, they were squandered on a story that needed much more development. A prime example of this is Lady Lunafreya. Supposedly, she is the other main protagonist of this game. Although, she's barely in the actual game.

In previous FF games, a character like Lunafreya would appear in the party and she'd fight with your team. In this game, she spends most of her time separated from Noctis and sending notes to him. And then, when we finally meet her, she is killed. And her death isn't even that sad, because I barely knew anything about her. Did I miss something? Maybe. But I played the whole game - and she definitely wasn't written to be a protagonist. And that sucks.

She is one of many examples of the weakness of this game's plot and its poor use of characters (don't even get me started on Cid and Cindy).

THE BOTTOM LINE

Final Fantasy XV isn't that great. It could have been, if they'd worked harder on it, but in the end it falls short. It's fun, but it's fun in the way that fireworks are fun. They're flashy in the beginning, but after a while, they're just loud and obnoxious.


Shann Smith is a lover of video games and has played them since he could hold a controller. He is a freelance writer, playwright, screenwriter, and also writes the Video Gay-Mer column on Popdust.

Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Why do we love visual novels so much?

What do queer gamers/developers love the visual novel platform so much?

Coming Out on Top game trailer

Visual novels are an art form, and when done right, they are an amazing storytelling tool. We've seen a lot of good, queer visual novels in the past years - or games that are about as close to visual novels as you can get. Just last year, we had two instant classics: Butterfly Soup and Dream Daddy, take the world by storm. Not only did they showcase incredible queer stories, but they managed to do it without any ounce of mockery or depressing melodrama.

So, I got curious.

What makes these kinds of games so incredible? And why are there so many? On Queerly Represent Me - a large back log of games with some sort of queer representation within them- 215 games are listed as visual novels. That's the largest genre of games on the list, clocking in at 20%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is - and that's significant. What draws queer gamers and developers to these specific type of game? I think that visual novels not only provide a simple, fun escape from the harshness of modern queer depiction, but they are also accessible, and cheaper than most other video games on the market.

In my last article, I wrote about a game called Butterfly Soup - a beautiful visual novel that covered the lives of four queer, Asian woman going through high school during Prop 8-era California. I gushed about it, and talked about how it's unabashed happiness just made me smile. And that's not something that happens in a lot of major games or successful indie games. Even a beautiful game like Gone Home, is mired with intense drama, reminding the audience about how much it can suck to be a queer person. That doesn't exist in games like Butterfly Soup.

There's an inherent layer of sexuality that exists in a lot of these kinds of games.

A huge example is a gay dating sim, Coming Out on Top, a very NSFW visual novel about a young, freshly out, college senior who is looking for love and sex. This game has a huge selection of guys you can seduce, and even goes the extra mile to have you come out to your friends and actively maintain your friendships. All the while, you are treated to some saucy pics and scenes of your gay character actually having/enjoying sex.

It's liberating, because even when queer people are depicted having sex - it's never correct. There's always that one scene where the guy doesn't use lube - and then you cringe, cause you know they got hurt. The visual novels I've played don't have that problem - because they're made by queer developers.

I think queer visual novels exist in such volumes because they can be easier to make than other games like RPGs of even exploration sims.

I can't say I'm an expert on game development, and visual novels definitely have their own set of challenges, but they can be made easily thanks to user friendly game engines. This accessibility allows young, queer game devs the opportunity to start making their own queer stories - and in an industry where people are starving for queer characters, they're bound to find an audience!

Visual novels are also cheaper for queer gamers to buy. Even a game like Dream Daddy, produced by the incredibly popular Game Grumps, went up for only 14.99. And Butterfly Soup is still free. This is worlds cheaper than most AAA games that include very basic forms of queer representation. So, there's a level of financial accessibility available for these types of games that don't exist in other places in the market.

In the end, visual novels make queer characters more accessible to a starving audience by being cheap - and they can empower their audience by giving them an escape from the misrepresentation they receive from mainstream media. These games are about queer characters, and made for queer people - and I only hope that the rest of the industry can follow suit. Until they do though, I'm just going to go and replay Dream Daddy for millionth time and cry about how beautiful Robert is.

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Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Butterfly Soup is the Fun Portrayal of Queer Teendom We All Need

It's so hard to find queer games that are not only accurate portrayals of gay teens, but are also hella fun. This is one of them.

Oh man.

Not going to lie guys, I'm kicking myself in the head for not getting to this title sooner. Most of you have probably heard of Brianna Lei's Butterfly Soup, a visual novel that took the gaming world by storm last year. For those that haven't, it's about four queer Asian-American teens attending their first year of high school in California.

It's astounding writing, characters, and overall depiction of Asian American queer teens have led to other sites like Polygon, PC Gamer, and Kotaku calling it a stand out game of the year. And, after playing through most of it, I can see why.

Listen. I don't like visual novels half the time. Even something like Dream Daddy, which I loved, gets incredibly boring. I suffer through them, because it's where a lot of queer content gets produced It's not because they're bad, I just have a specific taste and I don't want to spend three or four or ten hours just reading text on a screen. But, I was happy to do it with Butterfly Soup, because it's just so fun.

And that should be a given, right? Dream Daddy was fun, wasn't it? And so was Gone Home (which isn't necessarily a visual novel, but close enough)? And Life is Strange (which also isn't necessarily a visual novel, but again, close enough)? That's true, but I think what separates Butterfly Soup from them is that has a sense of honesty without taking away the humor and light-heartedness at all and making it either super campy or super depressing.

As much as I love Gone Home, it focused a lot on the negative experiences of queer youth. You hear a lot about how it's main character struggled with both her identity and helping her partner. While this is a very honest representation of what a lot of young gay folks through - it's not the only experience that we have.

We have a community and we have a lot of queer friends, and often times we surround ourselves with other queer people. That's what happens during the entirety of this game. You are dropped in on the life of a young queer girl and her other queer friends. You see how they interact, and how they find love - and while it does have moments that can be on the serious side - it never gets sad or weepy. We never see these characters go on long monologues about how they can't accept themselves and how they'll never be happy.

This is accomplished through Lei's decision to give the player no control over the story. You occasionally get a few dialogue options, but in the end, you see what Lei wants you to see. You are on a guided tour of the story - not a participant in it. So, you aren't mired in finding extra stuff here or there (although, there are some extra observations you can make when prompted). So, while I did find myself getting bored, Lei managed to reel me back in with some pretty choice story-telling techniques that even AAA titles can learn from.

Throughout the game, you are treated to flashbacks, which show the four main characters' friendship through the years, instead of just one specific point of time. Each one makes the characters more dynamic and provides and insight that informs previous scenes. It's not disjointed and it's all connected.

And aside from the main cast, we are treated to actual diverse characters of different races and sexualities. You have people of color, you have a trans character, bisexual characters - and even if they aren't big, they're still real. Even in a lot of queer-themed visual novels, you usually only get a lesbian or a gay man's story - and while this story does focus mainly on a relationship between two women - we still get a solid cast of fleshed out characters that are not exclusively gay and cisgender.

As I play through - I'm just smiling and relating. I don't feel sad and I don't feel that same sense of, "Man it's so hard being gay," that so much media gives me. That kind of media is important, we should always remember/be reminded of the struggle that people - especially young people - in the community deal with. But it's also important to show that it doesn't always have to be that way. It is possible to be young and happy - even if you're struggling, you can find people who loves and accepts you.

Butterfly Soup is a special game - it uses fun characters and brilliant storytelling to give you an honest and non-sad portrayal of a diverse group of young, queer women in a time where it's very difficult to be a young, queer woman. While it doesn't offer a huge variety in terms of gameplay, it weaves something that leaves you smiling and cheering and laughing.

Please, please, please go play it. You can get it for free right here - and make sure you leave Brianna Lei a damn good review when you're done.

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