One of my early RPG memories was playing Baldurās Gate and wondering who would bother reading the in-game books. I guess I was already too busy being COOL and casting fireballs and stuff.
The clan log? Still no idea of what you are talking about. This game sounds cool!
Itās me. Iām that nerd. Once again simias-sama is too cool for a lowly scribe such as myself. 
Did we play the same FFXII? Lmao
Iām really wondering that too 
was on PS2, if it makes a different. There was a girl called Ashe and a boy called Vaanā¦
I donāt remember any of that stuff either. I guess it means itāll be fresh when we get thereā¦
But you just played the intro? Wasnāt the girl at least mentioned in it?
I mean the stuff @GrimoireLux is talking about. I do remember some characters. Thereās Balthier too. And, ah, the bunny girl Fran.
Frame story is a literary device, a technique borrowed from the literary tradition. Itās just a nod here.
Just to keep the record straight, FFXII actually starts with a three-minute title cinematic followed by an action-packed seven-minute cinematic opening cutscene, in stark contrast to say Final Fantasy VI where we face a similar text straight from the menu, followed by a long credits scene! (PSX version added the customary cutscene, which you wonāt see with the Pixel Remaster. Look it up from YouTube if you like cinematics.)
The ten chopped-up paragraphs are just a bit of flavourful writing, introducing the setting and setting a tone. It takes the narrator less than two minutes to read it in an overtly slow & dramatic fashion. All of it immediately connects to the cutscene we just saw. The game first shows and then tells, and we get to start from an interesting place in media res rather than an idyllic newbie village with absolutely nothing going onā¦ but of course we still end up killing rats in a sewer once again, it just takes about 30 minutes to arrive.
I sympathise with the viewpoint of a Japanese learner having to do some work up-front here, but itās far from a Wikipedia article. You can still enjoy this game as a functionally illiterate player as I did in English back when it first came out, but there are extra layers in the story and writing if you want to engage with that.
Baldurās Gate was groundbreaking in its time, but looking back it seriously lacks in storytelling ā thereās so much to draw from in Forgotten Realms, but itās all so surface level, an excuse for the hack and slash that is its soul first and foremost. Baldurās Gate 2 took the foundation and seriously kicked it up with the storytelling department, very pleasing result. However, it was Planescape: Torment that truly dared to let the ink flow, and became the best CRPG of the 20th century. Disco Elysium currently holds that title in the 21st.
Pretty early in the game, you join a clan that essentially does mercenary work. You also are made to hunt down a monster to collect the bounty on it. After that, any further interaction with the clan and bounties are entirely optional. I assume you just chose not to engage after the mandatory 10 or so minutes.
Oh I probably did, but I havenāt touched the game in almost 20 years. I actually have my PS2 memory card still but I donāt think I know how to read it.
Wild thing to say about the book that starts with an entire treatise on Hobbit culture
I feel like the fact that I completely forgot that this prologue existed and even as Iām reading it right now I have absolutely no recollection of it both weakens and strengthen my point.
The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandywine. The Hobbits of that quarter, the Eastfarthing, were rather large and heavy-legged, and they wore dwarf-boots in buddy weather. But they were well known to tbe Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the down that many grew on their chins. No Harfoot or Fallohide had any trace of a beard. Indeed, the folk of the Marish and of Buckland, east of the River, which they afterwards occupied, came for the most part later into the Shire up from south-away; and they still had many peculiar names and strange words not found elsewhere in the Shire.
That fraud Peter Jackson didnāt dare adapt this part.
Yet another reason The Hobbit is the better book
These types of stage dressings are rarely the standout moments of narrative but they help contextualize the main attractions and make them more meaningful. Part of why Middle Earth is so beloved is because of the work that went into developing it. Ivalice is similar.
I admit that part of my frustration with FF12 this time around is that it of course requires a lot more effort for me to read Japanese than English. I think if I was re-reading the Lord of the Rings in English Iād just speedread the prologue to get to the good part and it wouldnāt bother me much, but if I tried reading it in Japanese it would drive me absolutely insane as I would spend two hours learning deep lore about the level of relative hairiness of various hobbit clans.
I still think itās strange to frontload that stuff, especially in a videogame where the non-linear structure means that you can easily make that content available to players who look for it without making it mandatory.
Anyway, letās continue this discussion when we finally get to FFXII, I have more hot takes about the intro sequence. I also want to be able to bring up the previous gamesā intros to compare and contrast, because there are some really amazing FF intro sequences coming up soon IMO.
Maybe by the time we get to XII, weāll actually be able to read it. lol
On that note, weāre now only one week away from the start of FFV! GET HYPE!
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You posted in the wrong thread, so Iām replying here to add to the confusion.
Arenāt those the same rats that were introduced in FF2?
Yep I clicked the wrong tab.
True theyāve been around, but this sprite is clearly based on the FFVI sprite.
The boss in the same area is also a carbon copy of an FFVI sprite.
Reposting in the correct thread I guess.
Something unrelated to all this absurd FFXII drama, I played a bit of the FF Resonance demo on Steam in japanese.
Pretty good so far. Fully voice acted, thereās a log you can pop up if you miss anything, all push to continue. Grammar isnāt crazy (on the level of mid to late FFs), font is readable, keyboard controls are good, no technical issues. For learning, this oneās up there.
edit: Found one unfortunate thing, some major cutscenes proceed on their own, and the log is not accessible, and the subtitles disappear on pause. After experimenting, I found it pauses when the window is unfocused. So if you play in a window or have some other way of unfocusing the main window while still seeing it, you can view the paused scene at your leisure.
The art style is very strange. Itās likeā¦ mixed materials. Thereās retro pixel art, āmodernā medium res pixel art, straight up regular 2D full-res art and even some bits that looked photoreal. Usually all these styles are in the same scene. The fire isnāt pixel-y (as in Octopath), itās literally made of transparent cubes. Lots of odd art direction choices. A lot of that craziness is in the set pieces; during ānormalā gameplay, it looks like Octopath, but Iād say the environments are more modern and less retro in general. Your main character absolutely looks like the main character sprite from that gacha game I played for a couple months, probably identical. Portrait art in general is very nice.
Donāt know much of the systems yet. Thereās magic spells, limit breaks. Weapon + armor + two accessory slots. If thereās any customization options, I havenāt seen them yet. Battles are random, but with a āradarā effect to let you know when oneās about to occur, so based on how much movement you do a la Octopath. They are turn-based with a timeline at the top, like FFX. Thereās a hard mode which is pretty unforgiving.
On and itās ćććć in this one too, not ę¦ć. Classic.
Look at this bastard, straight out of FFVI:
