“I am Alpha and Omega…
The beginning and the end…
The first and the last…”

I first played and finished Xenogears toward the end of February this year. Every day since 02/21/2021, I have thought about at least one aspect of Xenogears. Never have I played a video game that has entered my mind so relentlessly after finishing it. Since that day, I have wanted to write a review for the game, but I felt I had nothing to say that others before me haven’t already. I’m now going to make the foolish mistake of attempting to put into words just why I need to talk about it anyway.

“Those eyes were what scared me. When I looked in your eyes I saw myself staring back.”

Originally conceptualized as both a possibility for Final Fantasy VII and a potential sequel to Chrono Trigger, Xenogears did not receive the budget or support from SquareSoft as either game it could have been. This shows in its presentation graphically, opting for 2D sprites in 3D environments over the fully-3D visuals the team wished for. This could be considered “dated” by today’s standards, but if you enjoy games from the era as much as I do, you will feel right at home. By the second disc, the gap in budget and focus becomes painfully apparent as gameplay is sacrificed for the sake of finishing the story. This decision will not sit well with many, but I personally did not care much as the story content presented more than made up for the lack of consistent gameplay in the last third of the game. To make matters worse, Xenogears was meant to be the fifth part in a six-part series. Square even attempted to pressure the team into releasing Xenogears as disc one alone, but the team rightfully refused. Despite all these problems, Xenogears was finished (in a manner of speaking) and its message made clear to any who have played it.

"It's because they are weak that they can develop kindness... and never look down on people."

As with many RPGs worth mentioning, the story, characters, and world are what make Xenogears memorable, but that doesn’t mean the gameplay falls short in any regard. Combat is handled in two separate but linked forms—ground combat and Gear combat. Ground combat blends traditional ATB combat from Final Fantasy with a new Deathblow system. Characters perform attacks using the triangle, square, and cross buttons at the expense of Action Points (AP). The strength and AP cost increase from triangle to square to cross, but the accuracy decreases. This adds a layer of depth and strategy to the combat—should you risk a miss for higher damage or play it safe with weaker attacks? On top of this are the Deathblows themselves. Once you have reached the appropriate power level and experience in each attack move, characters will learn Deathblows—flashy and powerful combo finishers that make up the bulk of the damage in ground combat. AP can also be stored for future turns, allowing characters to unleash a flurry of Deathblow chains to decimate enemies.
As one might expect from reading the title, machines are involved in the form of Gears that will excite anyone familiar with the mecha genre in Japanese media. Gears perform differently in that characters must balance fuel supply and build attack power over multiple turns rather than simply performing Deathblows. Gears are customizable, allowing for more risk & reward-based strategies in combat. Should you focus on raw power? Maybe you’d rather have survivability with higher defense and more fuel efficiency.

“It’s okay not to feel ‘whole’. Even if you feel only partly complete, if you repeat that enough, it’ll eventually be ‘whole’. A part… is better than zero.”

The story of Xenogears is difficult to sell to anyone not already familiar with the game without spoiling something major in its narrative. Xenogears tackles a myriad of concepts and draws from a ridiculous amount of sources. Its influences range from numerous mecha anime to American novels and films to several paths of psychology and even a few different sects of religion. As I want to keep this review as free of spoilers as possible, I will only touch upon the themes in Xenogears lightly.
A war generations in the making finds its way to the village of pacifist Fei Fong Wong. The soldiers pilot giant weaponized mobile suits known as Gears. Caught in the crossfire, Fei takes control of a Gear himself to defend his village, thrusting him deep into the conflict. As he travels the world, Fei looks for a reason to fight, a place to call home, and sets out to discover his true self.
Through its characters and world, Xenogears tackles the horrors of war, the desire to change the world, helplessness and self-loathing, the impact of parents’ actions on their children’s psyche, psychological trauma and coping mechanisms in response, relationships that transcend lifetimes, the pursuits of retribution and redemption, fate, discrimination, god and the demiurge, the wakes of disaster brought about by blind faith, the loss of humanity through the evolution of science, the power of confluence, and last but not least—becoming whole.
Xenogears approaches all of these concepts with a surprising level of maturity and depth rarely seen in videogames during this period. Through its rough translations performed by mostly a single man, the messages of Xenogears are profound, thought-provoking, and long-lasting. I reflect upon its themes and narrative beats on a daily basis, simply because its impact is so strong.

“That dream changed me... That dream was the catalyst for me to resolve what my purpose was. I think I know now... What I have to do... That long, long memory of a dream... Perhaps it was the memory of my soul...”

The characters of Xenogears are a mixed bag ranging from outstanding to good to practically nonexistent. For a party consisting of nine playable characters, only five of them receive a notable amount of focus and depth. Fei Fong Wong in particular is what I would consider a true contender for the greatest and most engaging protagonist in any video game. Early on, Fei shows glimpses of a deeply flawed, but ultimately human character. As the player learns more about Fei, the intricacies that make up a truly complex individual shine magnificently through his struggles. I have never been so eager to learn more about the protagonist of a game than in Xenogears.
As the deuteragonist, Elly is a perfect compliment to Fei. Much like Fei, Elly has many human characteristics without feeling outlandish or without flaw. Her growth and connection to the central plot are unexpected and rewarding to say the least. She is one of the best examples of how to write a female character in my opinion. Though she is bound to another in the narrative, Elly can stand on her own with her personal conflicts and traits.
Citan and Bart are also worthy of note, but the rest unfortunately fall flat, becoming nothing more than background noise after their respective moment.
Though half of the main cast are not within the same ballpark as Fei or Elly, the villains more than make up for the weaker examples. Each major villain is given ample screentime and attention to fully develop them into human characters much like Fei. This is not a simple good versus evil plotline. Every major player has their stake in the world’s affairs for good reason, and conflicts are far from black & white.

"Music is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it makes people remember things they do not expect. Many thoughts, feelings, memories... things almost forgotten... Regardless of whether the listener desires to remember or not."

The music in Xenogears is simply phenomenal. Composed by SquareSoft veteran Yasunori Mitsuda—famous for his work on Chrono Trigger—the soundtrack of Xenogears is beautifully crafted with nearly every song being memorable and impactful. The only problem with the soundtrack is that it consists of under 50 songs. For a title that takes place over the course of 50 or more hours, this means that a number of songs are replayed at inopportune times, potentially lessening the impact of their original use. Despite that, it is easily one of my favorite soundtracks in video games and helps create unforgettable moments within the narrative. I cannot imagine Xenogears without it.

"You appear to be looking forward, but in reality you're only looking downward. You're only looking at yourself. Like that, you will find nothing."

Xenogears is not a perfect game. It has a number of production issues, a very shoddy translation, some unbalanced pacing, and the second disc is practically a slideshow. But, despite these shortcomings, I cannot recommend this game enough. With every new scene, questions are raised and seeds are planted to grow into awe-inspiring revelations and conflicts. To anyone that enjoys storytelling, complex characters, emotional moments, JRPGs, and insightful concepts… you must play this game. I cannot objectively give this game a full 10/10 simply for the problems caused by its scope, but in my mind, it is a masterpiece. Do not pass this one up.

STAND TALL AND SHAKE THE HEAVENS

the dark and melodramatic streets of kamurocho, contextualized by punctual camera angles, neon signs that dampen dark alleyways, and wacky inhabitants. kamurocho is alive. for every fun filled casino or arcade, an oppressive gang infested street lies just around the corner.
in the week or so since i've finished this game, i haven't stopped thinking about it. the dynamic cast of characters, the aforementioned bustling streets of kamurocho, the hard hitting sample induced rock soundtrack, and the clunky yet earnestly goofy combat; it's extremely honest and heartfelt in pursuit of a crime drama, and it certainly delivers. i think the themes of family bonds really tie everything together. the moments with the florist and his son, or date with his daughter were a bit of a deviation from the main narrative but they were ultimately for the sake of driving a point home, which i respect. yakuza 1 isn't afraid of itself unlike kiwami, it'll confidently present you its themes and gameplay without hesitation. while i do see the combat as inherently flawed it never got on my nerves or hindered my enjoyment of the game. it's clunky for sure but every attack, daft in approach, feels impactful when it connects. and with the backing of rough hardass rock beats mixed with the hip hop sample here and there, i couldn't help but be pumped up for every battle that ensued.
despite its flaws, i still appreciate yakuza 1 for what it sets out to do. the atmosphere is almost unparalleled in the ps2 library. between every freeze frame loading the next street, a sense of curiosity and infatuation follows. i don't care if kiwami is objectively better or whatever, this is the real yakuza experience to me. kiwami WISHES it could be this genuine.
BRING that shit, Kazuma.

-- Gorgeously rendered open world with clear thought put into it's design that is still actually pretty boring to traverse
-- Great music
-- A guitar riff plays in the cutscenes when the main characters start doing naruto shit and it's sick
-- Mostly boring sidequests with one or two bizarrely hidden really good ones
-- Too long
-- Some truly loaded language that it is not interested in or capable of discussing in any meaningful way

yep, it sure is xenoblade!!

if xenoblade chronicles is a mostly pretty brainless but highly entertaining shonen anime, then future connected is the non-canon movie spin-off where nothing really happens but it gives you a bit more time to spend with some characters you like, and it's an ok one of those. unless melia is your wife you're really not gonna get much out of this, and in true Takahashi fashion the character of Gael'Gar evokes some really heavy stuff that the game doesn't really have the capability or interest to handle accordingly. but, y'know, if you're deep enough into the xenoblade well to be playing the epilogue OVA, you're probably used to monolithsoft taking wild careless swings.

i think i'm mostly disappointed by how conservative it is. not in the weird kind of "reclaim-the-empire" honor and duty of the nobility thing, that's conservative in a different way, one that i already kind of expect from these games. i mean conservative in the sense that that future connected is wholly uninterested in doing anything remotely interesting, even as it charges past the point where the story really should have Ended. monolithsoft seem determined to dull whatever thematic impact the original ending of xenoblade 1 has, first with stuff in xenoblade 2, and now with this, showing that whatever infinite horizons and new futures await us, they're going to be the same people doing mostly the same things in the same places. and if future connected was about that, it would be interesting! but it isn't. in fact, it seems keen to insist that this is, in fact, a New World despite the fact that basically nothing has changed. if we had to return to this world, I would have liked for them to get creative or ambitious with it, to do something to justify it's existence, because as it stands, all future connected really does is hang limply off the body of a game that was already perfectly fine.

if this really is the Definitive Edition of xenoblade chronicles, when what does that say for what shape it will take place in history? an awkward appendix clinging on to a game that never needed it and arguably suffers from it's attachment? it doesn't even succeed at being more xenoblade gameplay, because you're working with a constrained and hampered toolset that's much less interesting to play around in. it's just a worse, miniature version of xenoblade chronicles. what's Definitive about that? have we learned nothing from Persona 3's The Answer? i doubt future connected will have much impact on history at all, except as a slightly unsightly asterisk on xenoblade chronicles' place in it.

however, it gets an extra star for two reasons. first: it was nice to enjoy a new bit of xenoblade content after my relationship with xenoblade 2 ended up so deeply fraught. i used to consider myself a xenoblade fan and 2, in not just being (imo) a really bad game but also something that held a perspective i found really triggering, kind of killed that part of me. so it was nice to just Enjoy this! two: they made nopons good again. oh my god. it's taken them two games and two expansions but they are finally great little guys we all love again. it's a fucking miracle!! kino forever!!!!

“They’re just lines of code.” That’s what my friend tells me. I wasn’t allowed to play Halo. It was too violent, and my parents, either in spite of or because of their relative progressiveness, did not want to allow or encourage me in playing violent video games. I remember googling about Red vs. Blue and my dad informed me that I “shouldn’t be looking at that.” I was a kid, after all, not even in my teens at the time. It’s not like I wasn’t able to get my hands on violent games; my crusade to play violent games, though, is a story for another time. The point is that our house never had Halo in it. And when, on that rare occasion, I did get to play Halo at a friend’s house, I was very careful not to tell my parents. So, in my mid-teens, I was at my friend’s house, in their thoroughly air-conditioned basement, with the lights off, and we played some Halo. I’m sitting close to the screen in an awkward chair. I’m awful at this game; I only know how to play these games on a mouse and keyboard. I see a grunt, fleeing with its arms in the air, and say, “Poor guy.” That’s when my friend chuckles and says, “They’re just lines of code.”

Interactive Buddy was a mainstay for any kid looking for ways to goof off in computer labs. This is what you see: four gray walls, a gray background, and a chubby little figure made six gray balls. That’s the buddy. You use your mouse to nudge and move the buddy around, generating a small amount of money. You use that money to buy new tools and what not: bowling balls, fire hoses, Molotov cocktails. And in doing things with the buddy, you can acquire more money to buy more weapons and tools. You can choose to play with the buddy and be kind, and you can choose to torment the buddy and be cruel. Cruelty usually wins.

This is how Interactive Buddy is remembered: a torture chamber. The buddy seems to be modeled after other programs like Bonzi Buddy or other digital pets. Its UI conjures up images of Windows XP. But while a virtual pet usually exists to be cared for, the buddy has no needs. You can’t feed it, and it doesn’t want food. So what is the buddy’s reason for being? The game has an opinion. The buddy exists to be hurt. The game description instructs you to beat it up. It’s more like a Bobo doll than a pet. I would venture to say that the vast majority of players used the game as a sadistic time-waste and little more.

The internet in the 2000s was rife with violent Flash diversions. Madness, Whack Your Boss, Happy Wheels, these jubilees of juvenile hyperviolence were everywhere. Interactive Buddy came out during that time, and it shows. For one, the game is filled dated and niche reference humor (how do you even explain StrawberryClock?), but it also has a fascination with violence. This was in the wake of things like Jack Thompson’s lawsuits, after Columbine and September 11th, where the notion of violent video games still felt a little transgressive. The developer of Interactive Buddy is literally called Shock Value. It revels in violence intentionally. And hey, why not? It wasn't hurting anybody, after all. They’re just lines of code. But our attitudes (or at least mine) have shifted dramatically over the years.

I’ve seen others comment that they feel guilt for what they did to the buddy, that it was cruel to harm the buddy. And truly, the buddy did nothing to deserve this, right? It merely exists, a floating jumble of orbs, and we come in and brutalize and beat it. The buddy expresses fear and dislike for the explosions and drubbings it’s put through. It doesn’t like “boom!”, and it’s mood gauge will slowly become a frown. It is clear that the poor thing is suffering. That would make it cruel to abuse it this way.

So that’s the obvious corrected position, right? That hurting the interactive buddy is bad, and you shouldn’t do it? Well, I’m not quite convinced of that, either.

See, to adopt that position is to take up a pretty serious assumption: that a simulated action correlates directly to a real one. We suppose that the buddy is harmed, but the buddy cannot experience pain. It’s a digital object. It’s just lines of code.

It is false to say the buddy dislikes pain. The buddy doesn’t like or dislike anything. The buddy is not an animal. It has no desires. It has no consciousness or qualia. It doesn’t breathe or even bleed. It is a simulated object with simulated movements that imitate that of fear, pain, and joy. When the buddy recoils from an explosive or shakes as it is tickled, these are only animations, programmed and procedural gestures that bear a likeness to animal behavior. As far as we can tell, there is no real suffering occurring. There is no evidence of a computer having consciousness, probably won’t ever be for a while, and certainly not the buddy. Even a Kantian would struggle to find an argument against it; after all, the buddy has no rationality to which we are to hold ourselves to respecting.

There is therefore no harm in hurting the buddy, nor is there a duty to be kind to it. All there is is a symbolic charade of a hedonistic dichotomy. The simulacra of pain and pleasure, entangled with each other as a binary pair. It is an imitation. It’s just lines of code. It is in fact less than an imitation of pain, not of the sensation, but only an abstract impersonation of the response to pain, the superficial choreography. A simulacra, of Baudrillard’s third or fourth stage, which signifies either absence or deference to other signs. And to accept the simulacra of pain and pleasure as equivalent to their corollaries in reality is to accept simulation as reality. At what point does the magic circle give way to our realized actions, then?

It should not be said that causing pain in Interactive Buddy is in some capacity related to causing harm outside of it, then. As such with pleasure, too. To do so is to open the floodgates; any digital harm must be condemned. Is it ethical to shoot aliens in Halo? Is it ethical to kick turtle shells in Mario? Is it ethical to eat ghosts in Pac-Man? Is there any virtual action in most video games that does not carry profound guilt? This is the necessary extent of this argument.

So, that’s my conclusion then, right? That it’s okay to hurt the buddy, and you should feel free to remorselessly bully and mutilate any digital denizens you encounter, because they’re just lines of code? Not quite. That doesn’t really work for me either.

Even if they are just lines of code, these are lines of code that have been given faces. Scott McCloud created this pyramid of representation: the realistic, the abstract, and the iconographic its three corners. You might be able to argue against this model, but let’s adopt it for now. The buddy is abstract and iconographic. Again, by default, it’s six orbs floating in a blank room. But the absence of realistic features does not mean it is no longer representative and recognizable. Its orientation and movements imbue these orbs with a humanity. While the buddy is so iconographic to be merely six floating balls, it is still immediately clear to most that it is a chubby little humanoid. You can call it pareidolia if you want, I guess, but that’s lying by omission. Pareidolia is the recognition of a sign (usually faces) in nebulous stimuli. These video game characters, on the other hand, were sculpted with the intent to invoke this response. We recognize a level of humanity in them, and that’s why we have empathy for them. This is what Jesper Juul might call the game’s fiction. The fiction of a game contextualizes its action and engagement. Without it, they really are just lines of code; floating points and vectors in a fog. But the fiction condenses the mist into a concrete, intelligible, and recognizable form.

When I saw the grunts fleeing in Halo, I did not see an array of code and polygons. I saw a creature fleeing in fear. My mirror neurons responded. And so my body and my mind instinctually, if only a bit, felt sympathy for it. It may be a computer generation, but I am able to recognize the simulacrum of a soul. Once again, it is important to know that these are only representations, but how we respond to representations still could mean something. We engage with signifiers in a simulated world. Does how we engage with them signify something, too?

There is not much evidence as far as I’m aware of that being exposed to violent media makes you more violent, nor that enacting violence within a digital space does, either. But the effect of media on our behaviors is something that has bothered people for years and years. Rap music, hard rock, comic books, television, even theater are all of a family of reviled media. Well before Mortal Kombat’s moral panic and Jack Thompson, Plato expressed the opposite skepticism about drama and poetry as mimesis, as imitation. Aristotle agreed that poetry was founded on imitation, but considered the disjunct between art and life to be a strength, too, and not just a weakness. And is it not, on some level? Despite the moral outrage, violent video games have not heralded a sharp rise in violence in the world. Anecdotes, maybe. Heightened aggression, possible. There is no real empirical evidence that I know of that shows violent art encourages violent behavior. So what unnerves us still?

With his name still in our mouths, let’s refer to Aristotle again with virtue ethics. Virtue ethics frame ethics as a product of one’s character. This may be the key to unlocking the modern controversy of violent video games: the virtue of simulated violence. Harming the buddy may not produce any real negative consequences per se, but the fear is that it produces or is produced by a vicious player.

The question is then not a matter of ethical utility, but of motive and virtue. It is quite literally a question about virtual reality.

What is it that purpose of harming the buddy? What is its virtue, its vice, its extension? Even outside the confines of Interactive Buddy’s torture engine, there is no shortage of cruel ballet in digital worlds. The subjects are not harmed, and as far as can be told, it doesn’t seem to have any broader implications for the ethics of the player. It affects nothing. All we see is mimicked anguish. There is nothing, good or bad, that comes of it. So why do we do it? Why do we want to see depictions of violence at all, let alone participate in them?

The cliche answer is that there is some immutable darkness within humanity which feeds on suffering. This is the kind of answer you’d hear from a Jordan B. Peterson or whatever Freudian charlatan. I’m not sure whether to call this most significantly naïve or presumptuous. I suppose it is both. It is presumptuous because it assumes this aesthetic tendency is universal, something that we all experience. It isn’t, and there are plenty of people who do not enjoy violent art. It is naïve because it implicitly posits that this correlates to a desire to enact the imagined actions and not merely fantasize about them, just as discussed. That the simulated darkness is in direct relation to a real darkness. So what does that mean? What makes a simulated darkness?

They are fantasies, but why do we strive to blur the line between this fantasy and reality? There has been a race towards the most realistic blood and guts we can find. Even if we want and need the magic circle as a boundary between reality and game to enable our violent impulses, there is also a culture of delight in hyper-realistic blood pouring out of our screens. We may have grown bored of it, sure, but the remnants are there. An example? Interactive Buddy gives you an option. For a price, you can make the buddy bleed. It changes nothing other than flecks of red appearing on the screen. So do you choose to? Do you choose to make the buddy’s pain feel more real to you? Do you make the fantasy more real? Why?

There’s an example from Slavoj Žižek (I’m sure you can find it somewhere, I’m not sure if it’s been written down) where he offers an interesting inversion. He presents the cliche of a gamer who in real life is meek, milquetoast, and bland man, but within the world of a game, he is brash, a womanizer, a marauder. The typical interpretation is that the real life person is the real person who lives out a fantasy in the game, but Žižek asks: what if it is the meek version of him is the one where he is pretending, and in the game he is truly himself?

It’s an interesting twist on the thought. It’s undeniable that virtual spaces offer ranges of expression which we desire in the real world but can only access there. This is one of games’ many powers: not just a lusory attitude, but an attitude of realization is possible. The boundary between game and reality is what enables this, that allow us to inhabit new and foreign attitudes of any kind. This extends to violence. The initial deconstruction Žižek offers asks us to consider that the truer nature is one of cruelty that is merely suppressed by the context of society. But games are games, and their disjunction from reality is freeing because it is a disjunction. It is precisely the division between game and reality that allows the average person to engage with this sadistic charade. Should the digital world become reality, how many players would actually continue the abuse? Would they become a marauder? Would you? I doubt it.

You might at first compare it to the way an actor speaks and moves as a character, but does not become them. Like Plato and Aristotle before him, J. L. Austin recognized that the act of speech was transformed by the stage. Austin wrote on the concept of speech act, things we can say that perform actions in and of themself, and highlights this. While the actor’s monologue is quite literally a performative utterance in one sense, it is not in the sense Austin uses that term. The speech does not, and cannot, perform an action it could otherwise; it is not intended to be taken in the same way as when the actor is off the stage. This is sometimes called the etiolation of language. It blanches the language; it is understood to not have the same seriousness behind it. This notion has been properly interrogated by jolly old Derrida, who in turn was interrogated by Searle -- that whole scuffle. Regardless, it is essentially of intention, of what action is intended or unintended by the use of language. A similar thing happens in games. The lusory attitude we adopt not only changes the actions we perform, but also changes how they are received and understood. But we don’t just speak or write in games. In fact, we mostly make movements and perform actions. What is etiolated, then? A gesture.

The question of how one engages with Interactive Buddy is a question of gesture. What is the extension of these actions, and their meaning?

When philosopher of communication Vilem Flusser sets out to define “gesture”, he begins describing a scenario in which he is punched. He initially defines a gesture as “a movement of the body or of a tool attached with the body, for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation.” What Flusser means by causal is specific. His project is to establish foundations for a study of gesture’s meaning, elaborated to a wide range of sociological phenomena. The causes of a movement that are physiological or even psychological are not satisfactory for a gesture. The gesture has a component of meaning which Flusser does not view as fulfilled by those explanations. He then goes on describe being punched, and his arm recoiling in pain. This motion is one he declares a gesture, because it is representation of something: “My movement depicts pain. The movement is a symbol, and pain is its meaning.” This is seen in the buddy, but only as a simulation.

Let’s return to McCloud’s pyramid. While this system identifies images, it does not identify the images in motion. What of images’ gestures? Animation, too, could be put along such a pyramid. The motion of this buddy is what lends its verisimilitude. Lines of code parodying behavior. The buddy’s movements have an adequate causal explanation in the game itself, but when we extend this question to the programmer, it becomes a gesture. This is the intent of the designer: to communicate the concept of intention and interiority. We may recognize the buddy as just lines of code, but we still recognize the buddy’s behavior. Their gestures, while mere imitations, are recognizable as those of pain and of pleasure. But when we play Interactive Buddy, are these communicative gestures? When we express through the game, express through actions on the buddy? The buddy may communicate to us; maybe it’s more accurate to say that the designer communicates through the buddy. The buddy is a puppet of the code, the meanings expressed therein designed by a programmer. But in our engagement with the buddy, as we poke and prod at it, is this communication? If so, to what are we communicating?

Play may not necessarily be communicative, but when we make the choice to interpret it as such, and as gesture, we butt up against an issue. Communication, generally, implies at least two people. A person who transmits, and a person who receives. Communication theory also recognizes the store of information, such as in a diary, as a form of communication, as well, as it communicates from the past self to the future self. But in a game like Interactive Buddy, the movements we make ephemeral. They cannot be saved and cannot be retrieved. Like speech, it is uniterable and impermanent, eddying away in the wind. If a movement is neither made for communicate, nor capable of being retrieved, is it still a gesture, or just a random convulsion? Can a gesture be non-communicative? Or, is it possible that in this gesturing--or speaking for that matter, anything ephemeral and solitary--that the action itself is communicative to my own immediate experience? Do I gesture to myself, then? Is that what it means to entertain yourself? When we play a game on our own, are we gesturing to communicate with ourselves? What am I trying to say to myself then?

Consider a diary. When I write in a diary, I communicate to myself through written language. When I doodle in that same diary, I communicate to myself through images. The constraint of the medium informs what I communicate to myself. In some ways, the constraints are what create the possibility for immediate this self-communication to exist at all. When I open up Interactive Buddy, I communicate to myself through my gestures within the game. The buddy is just lines of code, but my way of interfacing with it is also made up of code, too. The tool of gesture is not just the mouse, not just the computer, but also the buddy itself. Flusser later defines “gesture” as a movement which expresses freedom (and even later, paired with the freedom to conceal or reveal). The cause of the gesture is the desire to make it and the freedom to do so. But any movement is going to be constrained in some capacity, the gesture by the body, the diary by the letter, the soliloquy by the spoken word. My freedom of communication is necessarily, to some degree, interpellated by its medium. In a game, this is the entire conceit of play. The constraints are what make this self-communication possible. The game's unique limits then directly inform what I am capable of communicating to myself through it. I am only allowed to express what the game allows me to express. My gestures are limited.

When we say that the buddy didn’t do anything to deserve this pain, what do we mean by that? The buddy does do something to deserve it: it exists. Let me explain. Video games are full of teleological universes. In most games, everything is instrumental. The platform exists to be jumped on, the enemy exists to be killed, the coin exists to be collected. Everything has a purpose. It is incredibly difficult to make a truly nihilistic game in a mechanical sense, because to do so is to weave between any instrumentality. It’s possible to tell a story about nihilism, or that lacks meaning, but its mechanics will have bespoke purposes. The universe of the game has a rhyme and a reason.

The world of Interactive Buddy is constructed for violence. Not in an architectural sense, but in a cosmological one. When Jacob Geller describes worlds designed for violence, he is describing the architecture of digital spaces, how they create affordances for violence, what they look like in the real world. The archicecture of Interactive Buddy is never more complex than four grey walls. Instead, the make-up of its reality is designed for violence. That is the destiny of its teleological universe. The buddy, of course, has no free will (and thus cannot truly gesture in the sense Flusser uses), for one. But the buddy also has a destiny. The buddy has an infinite capacity for suffering and cannot die. It’s lines of code that respond to what we do. By hurting the buddy, we gain more money with which to buy weapons to hurt the buddy. Its suffering is a tool of its own propagation. Even pleasure can be instrumentalized in making the buddy hurt. That is the monad of Interactive Buddy’s world: pain.

It is not only reasonable, but entirely predictable that players would abuse the buddy. When we begin to play Interactive Buddy, we enter a playground designed for the express purpose of violent gestures.

But did it have to be this way? Immediately, there is an ambiguity: the open hand. That’s what is equipped to your mouse at the start. What does an open hand do? It can touch and hold, and it can strike. In the closing of a hand, one can either grasp or form a fist. The open hand is a pharmakon, an undecided gesture, which the player disambiguates in their choice of what to do with it.

We will always be left with more questions than answers. By what virtue do we harm the buddy? Since it is not a true act of harm, what is the extension of the act that it is gesturing towards? What is the precise purpose of this gesture? What does it signify, and to whom?

Games create virtual realities. In them, we inhabit virtual bodies and disembodied forces. We inevitably make gestures with them. It is not merely the etiolation of gesture. The machine is made not just a tool of gesture, but the system of parameters that limits our gestures, too. Its confines yet also create, as a segmented reality, the possibility of new and alien behaviors and expressions. Their unreality is what defines them. They are virtual in every sense of the word. They are not just gestures, but gestures towards.

Whether or not to hurt the buddy is not really a question of ethics at the end of the day. The suffering of the buddy was a foregone conclusion. It was borne into a world that was made for torture. But that’s okay. Because it can’t be hurt, not for real. There’s no harm in it. They’re just lines of code. But why do we do it, anyway? What drives us to these fantasies? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I ever will truly understand the impulse. All I know for sure is the question we ask ourselves: do you choose to hurt the buddy? And why? It's not a question about ethics. It’s a question about virtual realities. It’s a question of what the gesture of the open hand means to you.

https://link.medium.com/rYQbDiTDjrb

Easily the best xeno game I've played so far. Way more consistent than the others in regards to both gameplay and writing, and even though it didnt get as crazy mindfucky as the rest, it had some awesome highs and not many lows.

My main issue is probably the sidequests being so banal and uninteresting. I always heard this compared to FFXII and went in expecting something similar but the quests all felt like randomly generated busywork with no incentive to actually do them. Otherwise, the game as a whole is pretty solid, but there are some weird design flaws like the affinity system and the handholdy minimap markers that kinda clash with the rest of the game's systems and result in it feeling a bit restrictive and linear. It gives you so many tools to play with, but disincentivizes experimentation and exploration. Combat still feels good though, music cums, characters are great, dialogue is top notch, good ass game 3========D

what this game really nails is fulfilling this chaotic destructive urge in the player while also refusing to give into any sort of alienating or cynical aesthetic to justify it. in many ways it's a flippant creation mythos, rendering the earth asunder to create the sky anew. keita takahashi's sculpture student background can instantly be seen through these stellar structures that form from societal detritus, expanding and growing and taking on unique forms of every permutation of the level. each run is a celebration, with joyous rhythms from a range of latin, jazz, and electronic influences intertwined with screams, cries, and gunshots as the existing structures crumble and make way for astral creation. and it's so bittersweet when it finishes too.

gameplay is also masterful of course, not really shocking anyone by saying that. control this giant haphazard clump as you ricochet off of obstacles and absorb everything in your path. they could have easily left the game with no opposing force and instead intricately laid out a full playfield of different sized objects in each level, constantly forcing the player to make snap judgments about what can be picked up, where they should proceed next, and how they should weave through these patterns. the perfect push-pull of precise object management sections with the catharsis of finally breaking through to the right size where nothing can stand in your way.

Final Fantasy X is The Room of video games.

Hands down the funniest, most honest and charming video game I have ever played, perpetuating its inseparable awkwardness in every corner, proudly displaying its clashing hits and misses everywhere while being always entertaining along the way. From some Quandale Dingle character designs, to the unfinished yet peculiar Blitzball, to the irredeemably frustrating dungeons, to the messy yet sometimes Lynchian cutscenes at every corner, it more than compensates the ride by surprisingly always finding a way to make me care about what’s happening. The amount of times in which I ended up laughing at a supposedly serious moment while still feeling invested in knowing what outcome it will take, is too much to even consider counting.

Absolutely no other title would make me waste almost 2 hours restarting a completely bullshit poorly explained optional RNG minigame just to see Wakka, a character I barely knew anything about at that point, holding a shitty Playmobil looking trophy and giving a short fiddly speech for 50 seconds. All because the way in which he told me, with the world’s straightest face, that he never actually won a single match in 10 fucking years, was simply hysterical.

When someone compared it to Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece, it became one of those weird sentences that sounds right, so you agree first, leaving you to ponder whether or not it actually makes sense a couple of minutes later. Most of the time, Final Fantasy X portrays expressions and sentiments in a way that nearly always feels off, at one point even accidentally recreating the iconic shop scene with O’aka in a scene that was supposed to be nothing but mundane. Not only that, but also odd stylistic choices (say thank you Nomura Based God), subliminal pre-rendered interiors of houses and shops, bizarre hyper fascination with the fictional ‘soccered-up’ water polo and some mixes of postmodern economical practices in a world that by all means shouldn’t need them. To properly talk about the loveable sincerity of it all, let’s talk about what FFX’s really famous for.

Tidus laugh scene, is an absurdly famous bit in the gaming community, because of how bonkers the voice acting is, in that one specific moment. Late 00’s gamer culture fabricated the notion that Final Fantasy X was filled with uncanny valley moments that failed to understand how human beings communicate and feel, which was the standard for the amateurish voice acting present in the previous early 3D generation, in particular the english translated ones from japanese titles. The loveable yet amateurish delivery from Resident Evil and the outlandishly cartoonish cutscenes from Sonic Adventures, live rent free in our nostalgia filled hearts, just like this one continuous string of Haha’s. What fails to be stated is that unlike the previously mentioned ones, this iconic moment is legitimately a great scene despite it all.

If you watched the segment fully without playing FFX(spoilers ahead btw), everything feels weird, even if the laugh was to be a normal one. The scene kicks off with Yuna trying to impress THE BOUNCER the protagonist by whistling for whatever reason, and once she realizes he’s sad, she replies with “Wanna scream?”. Without the proper knowledge that he tried to teach her how to whistle if she got in danger (to which she failed previously), and that he screamed out of frustration after his current time travel situation finally kicked in, their relationship even before the meme properly starts feels outlandish and perhaps even childishly written. After that, Yuna does a small info dump and tells him to laugh his problems off, to which he glamorously does, only for her to reply with “You probably shouldn’t laugh anymore.” and immediately joining in with the ridiculousness of it all. But why?

Having full context of her speech and the mortal fate of those who follow the pilgrimage, the way in which she states “I want my journey to be filled with laughter” and even the reason to which she tried to mimic his horrible pattern only to repeat the same words about protecting each other by whistling, just hits different. The rest of the party is probably aware of the situation, but all they can do is stare, fully knowing that despite being marked for certain death, Yuna still tries to demonstrate companionship for someone she just met. Whether she knew that Tidus had no idea of what’s in store for her is irrelevant, as they both seem to be having a great time in the journey together, and that’s what matters in the end, right? That being said, the unnecessary camera movement, lack of context for some sentences, and the alien sounds being emitted as laughs, really add up, perhaps connecting your neurons to remind you of a certain scene that also fails in the same ways.

Some people like to refer to artistic projects as being soul or souless, usually talking about the intent of the ones behind it trying to express themselves in their own artistic ways more than to just generate profit. When I referred to FFX earlier as being the most honest, I meant that a lot of elements that the game gets it wrong come from the fact that choices were made to prioritize the title having a unique identity throughout the years, to which they completely nailed it. Early titles for a console have to be different to cause an impact for the newer generation to come, both from the console and from their developers, after all, if it’s just more of the same, why even bother? This title was a lot of people’s first Jrpg back in the day, and the overall reception being overwhelmingly positive for its impressive attention to care set the standard for what the ones born into the 6th generation of games would enjoy in the genre for the foreseeable future.

When you combine every area that wasn’t as fully realized, it’s impossible to not look back with a smile, for just like an actual ride, the only important part is being an unforgettable experience. Glancing back at the laugh scene once again, aren’t you glad it is exactly how it is? No boring back and forth camera wise, no run of the mill voice acting, no usual clarity in dialogue, just two friends that just met having an awkward talk. Exactly how it is, exactly how it should be.

Intention over execution is sometimes all that a piece of art needs. It’s the reason movies like Southland Tales or albums like Metal Machine Music, despite receiving mixed and polarizing ratings by critics and fans alike, are still discussed to this day: They have a strong and memorable identity in their remarks. Most people would rather endure through a fun mess over something whose production is decent, but not even close when regarding uniqueness. Movies like House are such a delightful unexpected journey to see even with the dated effects because of its untamed artistically wild originality, while others like Morbius will need (at least) a pirated webcam movie rip, 8 friends or enemies on vc, and a hellspawn creature that keeps making jokes about reverse morbing for the entire fucking movie like oh my god it’s been 1 hour stop already you’re accidentaly spoiling the movie c’mon.

Final Fantasy X isn’t the best at anything it does when compared to others from the series (it’s not even my favorite final fantasy to discuss), but when you combine everything that it displays, it’s hard not to just immerse yourself fully in this world, embracing the well crafted pre dystopian religious world to its limits. I wish Final Fantasy X had a way to go back to previous areas, had a better realized blitzball system, had puzzles that were less annoying, had non cheesy/grindy ways to beat the final boss, a better Al Bhed dictionary system… and the list could go on forever. But you know what I don’t wish was changed? The Second Life characters designs, the tight unilateral areas, the cutscenes that always look wet for some reason, the superfluous affection system, the wiggly dialogue angles… and the list could also go on forever.

Appreciating the title nowadays may be harder as our goblin gamer brain has less and less attention span, but it’s an effort totally worth trying. The game plays out like a 1 hour and 30 min animation that cuts 80% of the adventure in a 3 minutes bonding scenes montage, but here we are treated to it in its full narrative, with plenty of foreshadows along the way. I’m glad to have devoted myself to participating in Yuna's pilgrimage, while also closing the game glad that it was all over for them in that way. The magic of X, is managing a yin and yang of competence while making sure you never feel bored, fully embracing the early 2000’s tropical bling that the period had to offer.