The original SquareSoft RPGs, like Final Fantasy, were the way they were not only because they followed a certain set of design principles, but because they were in conversation with their contemporary works and the technology that made them.
And all of this in service of… what?Īrt and especially genre are the products of material and social conditions. The spells are called “Fire,” “Fira,” and “Firaga.” There are jobs. There is an ever-competent and just-hearted princess. Though his class position and sense of justice often put him at odds with other characters in the narrative. The hero, named Seth by default, is a fish out of water who fits at ease with his companions. The game suggests that genre is about ticking off boxes. Bravely Default 2 does not intentionally try to flatten the history of its genre down into this undifferentiated plane, but its particular brand of nostalgia leans into it just the same. It flattens the breadth and depth of a genre which has always been a strange and many-mouthed thing.
This vision became singular and totalizing (at least in the mainstream). Over time, their idiosyncrasies came to define what a “Classic” JRPG was. In North America, the SquareSoft style of RPG dominated cultural imagination around what JRPGs were and could be. The strange nostalgic warmth of a familiar corpse?īravely Default 2 represents something deeply broken in the way we talk about history. This is all to say that I don’t know what I should feel when he explodes in a fireball after an awkward fight with a demon-sword wielding villain who instantly overpowers the party. I bet he watched an old man die in his day, too. He passed on the wisdom he had to a special boy he just met because he, too, was once a special boy. The player is meant to be sad when he expires, but we all knew he was going to die, didn’t we? The old man passes without irony, dramatic or otherwise - no tragic march towards oblivion while dreaming of a better future.
He’s a strong, loyal, and kind old man who used to be a strong, loyal, and kind young man. This is not a spoiler because it’s obvious. An old man dies in the prologue to Bravely Default 2.
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