Final Fantasy IX Part #58

Part 58: The Sly Eagle

playing cards against this brat. I thought I could win the Namingway card off of him, I guess? Not happening. Our collection did expand a bit, though.

I've said it before and linked this one specifically, but Treno does have rather fantastic music.

And then we go and play some cards against a medieval basement nerd, except they didn't have basements in those days so he was an attic nerd instead.

"No I'm looking at my reflection in the lake. Aren't my flowing locks magnificent"
"Not really, they look more like you haven't bathed in years"

"Sorry. Maybe I've changed. It's probably his influence."
"Kilika, huh...?"

So yes for the record, Kuja is really fucking rich.

It kind of makes sense that he'd call himself King in a city of nobles named after chess pieces.

"It was painfully dull... until the day he showed up."

Oh fantastic. Our newest party member is unwashed, unemployed, and unsociable. Kawelo is either a goon, or a homeless.

Then it asks you if you want to listen or not, and I dunno why you wouldn't, but the ATE cuts out there. I think that's a rather nice touch for "don't give a fuck" players.

FF9, I think, is the best execution of my personal design philosophy. In books, yes, you should enrich your world with your descriptions, but not excessively unless they are your absolute best forte--and it better be damn good, I'm not gonna read five thousand words telling me how bad someone's shit stank--because then it becomes a pain.

But it's necessary, to a certain extent, if you want to craft an engaging world in writing. This is not the case with video games. Games have a very powerful visual element, so if you're going to do worldbuilding, you better tell and show. ATEs do this.

Otherwise, I don't want to read ten paragraphs of codex or bestiary about how your Flux Capacitor works, or how the popular children's toy GOLIWAG was named after the offensive-looking land tadpole monster, or how you only see the male members of this alien race because all their females are gigantic immobile vaginaslugs, or how there are exactly twenty-thousand-five-hundred-and-seventeen bricks in this highroad.

I want to SEE someone tinkering around with the Hyperdrive or whatever, maybe break the fourth wall and ask you personally if you want to know a little about it, gimme a couple different panning angles as the engineer discusses the thing, and have him shrug or maybe give a little "PLEBEIANS" scoff-and-fistshake if you decline.

I know it takes more work--sometimes a lot more work--but codices are the bane of these games because they basically gloss over the whole visually interactive part that makes it a goddamn video game.

Lost Odyssey is the exception because its short stories are, very plainly, short stories. They are written as such, and they have little picture book-style supplementary materials and accompanying tracks from the game, but they are, at their core, stories, and not entries nine hundred words too long to be blurbs.

"... Are you trying to tell me something"

"Playas never do

"Hmph. So you're the King family's infamous new security guard, huh?"
"Come on, fight me."
"Hmph. So you're just a thug."

It's just so hard not to make sexual jokes when they walk out and present themselves on a platter for you.

THIS LP IS FINISHED

"He came out of that door as I was passing by!"

"(How can I describe it to you? The sly eagle hides its claws."

"lady you are such a DICK"

"But I need to understand him... He doesn't flaunt his power. He only cares about being with his friends..."

This might be a little strange to consider because the wording is a little weird, but I totally know the feeling. It's difficult because it's not the mainland where you can just drive over to your bro's house, not even if it's a couple hundred miles away. The insurmountable geography of Hawaii makes you appreciate your off-island friends a lot more, and a lot of 'em I'm close enough to that I consider them family. Folks can be really important to you, and there's no better situation in which to find yourself surrounded than when it's your comrades that you're surrounded by.

"you go off on the weirdest tangents, you know that?"

"i bet you have rat attention deficit"
"damn straight i have RAD"
"oh dammit"

This is presumably the same Mr. Bishop from earlier when we met Doctor Tot and got the Supersoft. He is terrible at cards, of course.

So you have King (who is Kuja), Queen Stellazio, Cardona Bishop, and Knight owns the equipment shop by the auction house. That only leaves Rook, maybe it's in the slums somewhere, or perhaps it's some clever thing involving Doctor Tot's tower, but I'm almost completely certain that there is no explicitly-mentioned Rook otherwise.

I went to boarding school with a fellow a bit like Iz here. Pi'i was a good guy, ended up in Alaska because he heard that the government gave you free money to live there. We both have very low bass voices, so our greeting was not your casual "ho bu" or "oh sup," but we would instead greet one another by saying the other's name in as low of a voice as possible.

He was not much one for speaking, very much fond of the beach, and you'd never know at a glance but he was an absolutely brilliant mathematician. I will always remember how we'd all gravitate to the room of our friend who had boxes and boxes and boxes of chocolates and candies, whiling away idle afternoons waiting for our mandatory dinner hour, lounging about and talking story, sometimes someone strumming away at a guitar or ukulele, and Pi'i would manage to eat through dozens of candy bars without anyone noticing. Completely noiseless. You'd think the wrappers would crinkle and shred, that you'd hear the telltale sound of mastication, but always, always silent as a stone.

And for all the eating of dozens of peanut butter cups every single day, he wasn't overweight in the slightest.