Is there a problem with modern final fantasy story telling at Square Enix?

[meiam]

I couldn't stand 12 either. It took me 3 tries, I think, to force myself through the entire game. It was all so dull. Politics, blah blah blah, now run around in a dungeon for an hour while your characters fight monsters for you. The character spent a lot of time holding idiot balls, and I couldn't stand any of the main cast.

If anyone wants to read an entire book analyzing the game, this write up is very good. I think he does actually like the game, but is very critical of it nonetheless. I can only imagine how tedious it would have been to post something like that on our current piddly 10k characters per post forum.

I like Yahtzee analogy from his review that the gameplay felt like you were just pushing a trolley around with the character from fight to fight and they'd do the atcual fight themselves. The gambit system was great, but the underlying gameplay was exceptionally barebone, less complex than anything since FF4. A simple "attack the enemy until you hit 30% health and then use cure" could take care of every regular encounter and for boss you only had to add "cast haste on everyone" and you were golden. All the character were identical from a gameplay point of view too.

Someone mentioned FF10-2, I think that game could have been good if they'd untied it from FF10 and remove teh creepy fan service (for those who haven't played, there's a segment where you have to give a sexy massage to a chacater while she moan suggestively the entire time, and that's not even the worse of it). But it had some interesting element, the charlie angel aspect was different enough to be interesting and it was a lot more cheerful game (until the doomsday plot happen and ruin it). But as a FF10 sequel it's awful, managed to miss all the big point of 10 and retcon plenty of stuff.

 

[dscross]

Yes, and that problem is Kazushige Nojima, good friends with Tetsuya "Belts and Zippers" Nomura. The two of them are in charge of the writing and creative decisions of most every FF property now, and they're hacks. I think the only one of the games you didn't like that they weren't apart of was XII, which was done by the people behind Tactics. As a side note I also disagree, XII has a great story, but only with the caveat that you ignore Vaan (as the cast does). That misstep was due to executive meddling in needing a teenage protagonist.

Maybe I'll give the story in 12 another chance. I haven 't played it since it first got released so maybe I'll change my opinion on it if I play it now. I think it's on sale at the moment on the ps4 store. I just don't remember it wowing me and coming out thinking it was pretty bland as a whole. I finished it though.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Maybe I'll give the story in 12 another chance. I haven 't played it since it first got released so maybe I'll change my opinion on it if I play it now. I think it's on sale at the moment on the ps4 store. I just don't remember it wowing me and coming out thinking it was pretty bland as a whole. I finished it though.

It definitely leans on the politics, like Tactics did. It just has the unfortunate circumstance of having Vaan and Penelo forced onto it.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

What specifically didn't you like about 10's story, out of curiosity? My gripe with that game was more to do with gameplay and the fact that large parts of it felt like you were just going down a corridor until later on. But I thought the story itself was reasonably well written. With you on 12 though. Not so much 6 as I love that story.

I really didn't care for any of the characters, I think Rikku and Wakka were actually the most likeable. Tidus was annoying, Yuna was like the most boring woman ever, Lulu didn't do much, Kimahri barely said anything I think, and Auron was standard quiet badass archetype. I recall the whole wedding thing being stupid. I think they overcomplicated the story because on its most basic level, it's interesting; the bad characters didn't help. I remember Rikku's people being the most interesting and them being only a small part of the story. I feel like the twist, from what I recall (it has been at least 15 years), was revealed earlier than it should have and it just dragged getting to the ending.

The whole game from what I recall (outside of the Calm Lands) was a linear corridor basically. Sure, you could fly back to those prior linear corridors but they're still linear corridors.

Also I did watch I think the tie-in FF7 movie, but I only remember Cloud on a cyberbike and nothing else.

I remember reading this long ass story synopsis of the FF7 before watching the movie as I've never played the game and I was pretty unimpressed with the movie. I don't even recall what the hell the movie was even about in the slightest.

I like Yahtzee analogy from his review that the gameplay felt like you were just pushing a trolley around with the character from fight to fight and they'd do the atcual fight themselves. The gambit system was great, but the underlying gameplay was exceptionally barebone, less complex than anything since FF4. A simple "attack the enemy until you hit 30% health and then use cure" could take care of every regular encounter and for boss you only had to add "cast haste on everyone" and you were golden. All the character were identical from a gameplay point of view too.

FF12 uses like the same exact combat system as prior games, it's just that you could automate it all via the gambits. I could program FF10 to play itself with the gambits too. Hell, FF10 was even easier, I just had 3 mages that used double-cast every turn. Or I could program Xenosaga (except 2) to play itself with gambits too. Standard JRPG combat is overly simplistic.

 

[dscross]

I remember reading this long ass story synopsis of the FF7 before watching the movie as I've never played the game and I was pretty unimpressed with the movie. I don't even recall what the hell the movie was even about in the slightest.

I wouldn't use Advent Children as a lens to view FF7 through as it is shite and not really representative of the original. I don't like any of the other FF7 media outside the original and the majority of the remake. I didn't care for Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus.

 

[meiam]

FF12 uses like the same exact combat system as prior games, it's just that you could automate it all via the gambits. I could program FF10 to play itself with the gambits too. Hell, FF10 was even easier, I just had 3 mages that used double-cast every turn. Or I could program Xenosaga (except 2) to play itself with gambits too. Standard JRPG combat is overly simplistic.

Most JRPG have some form of gameplay variety, maybe all the character are very different, a la FF6, and different party will need to fight differently, or maybe there's a large variety of class, a la FF5. FF12 had none of that, all character were almost identical and had access to almost everything, teh only difference was what summon you gave them, but summon were a waste of space anyway.

 

[sXeth]

FF is not a series I would generally label as having the strongest storytelling out there. Even in Square's golden age as it were (whcih I would say was SNES)


1 was a mish-mash of nonsense slapped together into a game, there weren't even characters in a narrative sense.

2 and 3 are clearly so memorable people barely remember they exist.

4 has some strong character moments, but the overall story is again weird mishmashed nonsense (ninjas and tank driving dwarves fight moon alien robots, etc)

5's again pretty undercooked. I wouldn't say it doesn't have some decent moments, but it's more or less the last of the Elemental Crystal games and kind of showing the hokeyness of that premsie by that point.


6, again with a very stong character ensemble. One of the tighter storylines, but theres not too much out of the box to it.


7 starts out excellently. Then takes some not pafrticularly well justified turns when they suddenly start chasing "Sephiroth" across the world despite him seeming to be on their side (and they forget about Shinra entirely). With a lot of the ensemble not particularly getting any meat to them (By the end I thnk Barret ends up with the most characterization after the "twist" wipes out most of the build work being done on Cloud). The villains threat is ultimately kind of generic, his motivation is pure angstyness, and he's just a helpless pawn/front for actual villain Jenova.



8 Again, opens decently. Characters are kind of meh, the twist in this one is a big flop. You get some cool scenes out of this, but the better story seems to be in the flashback crew with Laguna, but those cut out before their climax and you just get the "Oh yeah we won and now we run the empire" handwave when you find them in the present. Then the ending twist makes the thin generic villain even more thin,.



9 Probably the best of the storyline FFs. The main ensemble all have arcs and depth (setting aside Quina and Amarant). The ending gets wobbly (you basically have to go on the theory that Kuja had st some point acquired Nekton amongst other Eidolons to make any sense of it), but generally everyone has some backstory. There is a twist in it, as is the fashion at this point, but it doesn't seem to outright undo any prior part of the story work as the 7 and 8 ones did.


10 gets a little too weird on its twist again, with the idea not making a whole ton of sense (The Zanarkand reveal, not the undead stuff). Generally I would say it holds together despite that.

 

[dscross]

FF is not a series I would generally label as having the strongest storytelling out there. Even in Square's golden age as it were (whcih I would say was SNES)


1 was a mish-mash of nonsense slapped together into a game, there weren't even characters in a narrative sense.

2 and 3 are clearly so memorable people barely remember they exist.

4 has some strong character moments, but the overall story is again weird mishmashed nonsense (ninjas and tank driving dwarves fight moon alien robots, etc)

5's again pretty undercooked. I wouldn't say it doesn't have some decent moments, but it's more or less the last of the Elemental Crystal games and kind of showing the hokeyness of that premsie by that point.


6, again with a very stong character ensemble. One of the tighter storylines, but theres not too much out of the box to it.


7 starts out excellently. Then takes some not pafrticularly well justified turns when they suddenly start chasing "Sephiroth" across the world despite him seeming to be on their side (and they forget about Shinra entirely). With a lot of the ensemble not particularly getting any meat to them (By the end I thnk Barret ends up with the most characterization after the "twist" wipes out most of the build work being done on Cloud). The villains threat is ultimately kind of generic, his motivation is pure angstyness, and he's just a helpless pawn/front for actual villain Jenova.



8 Again, opens decently. Characters are kind of meh, the twist in this one is a big flop. You get some cool scenes out of this, but the better story seems to be in the flashback crew with Laguna, but those cut out before their climax and you just get the "Oh yeah we won and now we run the empire" handwave when you find them in the present. Then the ending twist makes the thin generic villain even more thin,.



9 Probably the best of the storyline FFs. The main ensemble all have arcs and depth (setting aside Quina and Amarant). The ending gets wobbly (you basically have to go on the theory that Kuja had st some point acquired Nekton amongst other Eidolons to make any sense of it), but generally everyone has some backstory. There is a twist in it, as is the fashion at this point, but it doesn't seem to outright undo any prior part of the story work as the 7 and 8 ones did.


10 gets a little too weird on its twist again, with the idea not making a whole ton of sense (The Zanarkand reveal, not the undead stuff). Generally I would say it holds together despite that.

I can't agree with this. I think all the snes and PSone era games told excellent stories that kept you constantly engaged throughout and really went deep on all the themes they wanted to get across. You also knew exactly where you were up to in the story and understood the world and setting without needing any background reading, unlike some modern iterations. Yes they had a few issues in a jrpg sort of way and were a bit wacky in places - but many stories are. It's part of their charm anyway. I agree the nes era wasn't anything special.

 

[meiam]

If anyone wants to read an entire book analyzing the game, this write up is very good. I think he does actually like the game, but is very critical of it nonetheless. I can only imagine how tedious it would have been to post something like that on our current piddly 10k characters per post forum.

Man that write up was great! Anyway we can get this guy to join the forum, or hell just give him a column on the main site, his style is pretty close to Shamus column so it'd work.

 

[sXeth]

I can't agree with this. I think all the snes and PSone era games told excellent stories that kept you constantly engaged throughout and really went deep on all the themes they wanted to get across. You also knew exactly where you were up to in the story and understood the world and setting without needing any background reading, unlike some modern iterations. Yes they had a few issues in a jrpg sort of way and were a bit wacky in places - but many stories are. It's part of their charm anyway. I agree the nes era wasn't anything special.

As the SNES run goes, I'd say the main pitfall tended to be scope. Possibly leaning on the example set by Link to the Past, every single one of them tried to staple on extra worlds. But in 4 the underworld is only a few spots of note and the moon is just a desolate nothing space). 5 has a bit more meat to the 2nd and 3rd worlds, but there's still a definite fading off as you go on. 6 again, probably benefits from being the tightest of the batch (and also only has 1 additional world).


The PS entries just seem massively unfocused, and too bent on trying to throw twists in. The opening act of 7 is one I will commend. Then suddenly it drops almost all its built up narrative to go chasing Sephiroth. Then it turns out Sephiroth wasn't actually Sephiroth, Cloud is Cloud, but all his backstory is actually Zack. Which considering the rivalry between Cloud and Sephiroth was the main axel of the hero's motivations to chase him, basically unravels about half the proceeding plot of the game. 8 spends its time juggling two separate storylines, then abandons one two thirds of the way through. Then also unloads twist after twist after twist, form the heroes all being amnesiac childhood buddies, to Cid and Edea being their forster parents, to the actual villain being in the future and time-warp-min-controlling the established villains (not that the sorceresses got much character, but they were at least present). Rounding out the trilogy, 9 also shoves some obligatory twists in, but Zidane's origin doesn't really disrupt the backstory, and Garnet's fits in. Most of what I'd critcize in 9 is there's a bit of padding when you're trying to get into Terra that feels forced in there to be a nod to FF1.

and understood the world and setting without needing any background reading,

To take 7:
-How did an electric company end up being the world government?
-Why is there no transit system between these obviously interconnected Shinra locations? That or why are our heroes incapable of using it and instead go galavanting aroudn the world in the most roundabout way possible.
-To add to that, the "LAs Vegas" esque locale is in a remote location, miles and miles, and across an ocean from the only people who would be able to afford to go there (The remake actually makes this goofier, because Jessie who lives in Mdigar but her parents think she's working there)
-Why are there no other cities?. I've already actually forgotten since January if there were reactors outside of Mdigar other then Nibelheim. If the other populated zones don't use Mako, how are they under Shinra's thumb.
-For that matter, Midgar doesn't maintain a port, despite having ample coastal space. They have to trek any overseas traffic down past a mountain range to Junon. Then the only port on the other continent they control is a resort town. Why in hell do they have a massively fortified cannon base as one port, and literally nothing on the other side that is closer to their established enemies.
-What are Summons supposed to be anyways. 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 all bothered to explain this, in 7 they're just kind of there.
-Why did Shinra stop hunting Cloud again? They send a literal army to capture the two dudes. They only killed one. The same could be said for all the Sephiroth clones.
--How are the Turks able to stand toe to toe wiht Soldiers, and superhumans etc. There's no indication they got any sort of experimental upgrades to them. Or why they seem to run only vaguely under any actual Shinra supervision.
-Where do all those Sephiroth clones keep getting his signature sword from anyways (even handwaving that you essentially need Crisis Core and some amoutn of fanwank to explain the clones turning into actual Sephiroth doppelgangers)

 

[Dalisclock]

Oh god please don't talk about the Lore entries in 13. I still have nightmares. Lol

I never played FF13. Instead I watched an all cutscene version of the game and felt it was so very Meh, and now I'm hearing even reading the codex/encyclopedia doesn't help much(and using a codex as a standin for storytelling is pretty craptastic to start with).

It's too bad because I put myself through that because I like the premise of the whole trilogy but what I've seen is just so.....eh. I kinda liked the Dr Who Schanigans of FF13-2 but even then....

 

[dscross]

To take 7:
-How did an electric company end up being the world government?
-Why is there no transit system between these obviously interconnected Shinra locations? That or why are our heroes incapable of using it and instead go galavanting aroudn the world in the most roundabout way possible.
-To add to that, the "LAs Vegas" esque locale is in a remote location, miles and miles, and across an ocean from the only people who would be able to afford to go there (The remake actually makes this goofier, because Jessie who lives in Mdigar but her parents think she's working there)
-Why are there no other cities?. I've already actually forgotten since January if there were reactors outside of Mdigar other then Nibelheim. If the other populated zones don't use Mako, how are they under Shinra's thumb.
-For that matter, Midgar doesn't maintain a port, despite having ample coastal space. They have to trek any overseas traffic down past a mountain range to Junon. Then the only port on the other continent they control is a resort town. Why in hell do they have a massively fortified cannon base as one port, and literally nothing on the other side that is closer to their established enemies.
-What are Summons supposed to be anyways. 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 all bothered to explain this, in 7 they're just kind of there.
-Why did Shinra stop hunting Cloud again? They send a literal army to capture the two dudes. They only killed one. The same could be said for all the Sephiroth clones.
--How are the Turks able to stand toe to toe wiht Soldiers, and superhumans etc. There's no indication they got any sort of experimental upgrades to them. Or why they seem to run only vaguely under any actual Shinra supervision.
-Where do all those Sephiroth clones keep getting his signature sword from anyways (even handwaving that you essentially need Crisis Core and some amoutn of fanwank to explain the clones turning into actual Sephiroth doppelgangers)

You don't need to know most of that stuff to enjoy the plot and understand narratively what was going on - or get a grasp on the broader themes they want to get across. That happens in loads of stories where they create made-up fantasy worlds across most genres, especially rpgs - anything with big worlds - Lord of Rings, The Witcher, Narnia. Anything with a made-up world. I still don't know a lot of that stuff and I don't care - background reading not required to enjoy the narrative, characters and follow the plot. None of that is really relevant to enjoying the story. You are presenting examples of lore as opposed to storytelling.

It doesn't affect the actual storytelling - most of that is optional world-building you can look up afterwards if you really want to know. Whereas you literally had no idea what was going on with half the plot-relevant stuff in FF13 and FF15 without finding stuff outside of the game or in menus.

 

[meiam]

I never played FF13. Instead I watched an all cutscene version of the game and felt it was so very Meh, and now I'm hearing even reading the codex/encyclopedia doesn't help much(and using a codex as a standin for storytelling is pretty craptastic to start with).

It's too bad because I put myself through that because I like the premise of the whole trilogy but what I've seen is just so.....eh. I kinda liked the Dr Who Schanigans of FF13-2 but even then....

The main thing that's in the codex is the motive for the bad guys. The reason they wanted to kill everyone is because long ago some god like race created human and Falcie and then left. The Falcie really want to meet them again and at some point a (human) philosopher/prophet though that maybe the god like race left to go to the same place that people go when they die. So the Falcie decided that if they killed a bunch of human at once, maybe the god like race would notice something weird was going on and would come back to take a peek. But the Falcie can't actually kill human themselves, so they needed to make the whole convoluted scheme instead.

If you're thinking "boy that's a pretty weak reason to wipe out humanity" yep.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Man that write up was great! Anyway we can get this guy to join the forum, or hell just give him a column on the main site, his style is pretty close to Shamus column so it'd work.

He used to comment pretty frequently on Shamus' website, but I don't see him in any of the comments for the past couple months. Too bad. When Shamus was doing his FFX analysis I looked forward to reading The Rocketeer's comments almost as much as the article itself

 

[Dalisclock]

The main thing that's in the codex is the motive for the bad guys. The reason they wanted to kill everyone is because long ago some god like race created human and Falcie and then left. The Falcie really want to meet them again and at some point a (human) philosopher/prophet though that maybe the god like race left to go to the same place that people go when they die. So the Falcie decided that if they killed a bunch of human at once, maybe the god like race would notice something weird was going on and would come back to take a peek. But the Falcie can't actually kill human themselves, so they needed to make the whole convoluted scheme instead.

If you're thinking "boy that's a pretty weak reason to wipe out humanity" yep.

I'd kinda forgotten about that. I remember Caius from FF13-2 and his whole deal and how stupid that came across. I get him being angry and sad over Yeul dying over and over again, but his "Lets destroy reality" seems like a terrible solution to the problem. Yes, Caius, genocide is far preferable to one person dying over and over again because the gods fucked her over

And then there's the revelation he could have done that at literally any time he wanted without his convoluted paradox scheming which makes it even worse.

 

[SupahEwok]

He used to comment pretty frequently on Shamus' website, but I don't see him in any of the comments for the past couple months. Too bad. When Shamus was doing his FFX analysis I looked forward to reading The Rocketeer's comments almost as much as the article itself

Rocketeer hasn't had much to comment on. Over my years of knowing him over on Shamus' blog and forums, he'd be interested in plot analysis, not so interested in programming, and Shamus has been kind of leaning towards the latter during lockdown. He'll probably start showing up again when Shamus does a game series.

 

[sXeth]

You don't need to know most of that stuff to enjoy the plot and understand narratively what was going on - or get a grasp on the broader themes they want to get across. That happens in loads of stories where they create made-up fantasy worlds across most genres, especially rpgs - anything with big worlds - Lord of Rings, The Witcher, Narnia. Anything with a made-up world. I still don't know a lot of that stuff and I don't care - background reading not required to enjoy the narrative, characters and follow the plot. None of that is really relevant to enjoying the story. You are presenting examples of lore as opposed to storytelling.

It doesn't affect the actual storytelling - most of that is optional world-building you can look up afterwards if you really want to know. Whereas you literally had no idea what was going on with half the plot-relevant stuff in FF13 and FF15 without finding stuff outside of the game or in menus.

Several of those are critical plot points of the game.

Sephiroth is in the crater in his mako crystal. Yet he is able to physically free Jenova, kill President Shinra, collect the Black Materia, and kill Aeris.

All of the above are major events dictating the story. Its never explained in the game. You actually have to go flip flopping around through Crisis Core, assume he got Angeals abilty to clone/transform clones, an unrelated ability to control those clonse, and also his sword just kind of pops out of nowhere. Which is, as noted, a bunch of random fan theory (though canonized essentially in Advent Children when he does that on-screen to whatshisname)


A large chunk of the game itself (though in terms of story, its basically padding out the runtime), revolves around the weird lack of a transit system. Its what ends up routing you through the Gold Saucer and Rocket Town (the point of the latter being to get Cid's plane which is insanely crucial but also apparently irrelevant since everyone just ends up on the Highwind).


The overall effect of the "Lifestream", another plot point. Sephiroth falls in, drifts to the center, and becoms encased in MAko. Cloud falls in, twice survives, and comes out at an arbitrary location. Tifa falls in as well, goes nowhere, and survives despite being a regular human, actually seeming to handle it better then the two supersoldiers with Jenova cells, since she doesn't experience any of the Mako poisoning and what have yoo afterwards. Once again, these unexplained and wildly inconsistent world element are all major plot points.


Another tertiary batch of inexplicable elements in disk 3, Shinra suddenly goes to get huge super-materia from abandoned reactors. The Mako-hungry super-experimental corp has previously apparently just left these immmensely powerful Mako items lying around without a care., despite knowing exactly where they are sitting.



Cloud's backstory and survival are of course, critical, he's the main character of the game. So having the gap where they just decide "Well we killed one dude, lets just ignore the other one of these experiments who may be our last/best chance at making a new Sephiroth lie in the dirt here". They know there's two escapees, you find the logs about it. (The remake actually shifts this up, because Zack hides him before the battle. Its got about two dozen other issues with Cloud's backstory and how they handle it, but that one was actually addressed)

 

[dscross]

Several of those are critical plot points of the game.

Sephiroth is in the crater in his mako crystal. Yet he is able to physically free Jenova, kill President Shinra, collect the Black Materia, and kill Aeris.

All of the above are major events dictating the story. Its never explained in the game. You actually have to go flip flopping around through Crisis Core, assume he got Angeals abilty to clone/transform clones, an unrelated ability to control those clonse, and also his sword just kind of pops out of nowhere. Which is, as noted, a bunch of random fan theory (though canonized essentially in Advent Children when he does that on-screen to whatshisname)


A large chunk of the game itself (though in terms of story, its basically padding out the runtime), revolves around the weird lack of a transit system. Its what ends up routing you through the Gold Saucer and Rocket Town (the point of the latter being to get Cid's plane which is insanely crucial but also apparently irrelevant since everyone just ends up on the Highwind).


The overall effect of the "Lifestream", another plot point. Sephiroth falls in, drifts to the center, and becoms encased in MAko. Cloud falls in, twice survives, and comes out at an arbitrary location. Tifa falls in as well, goes nowhere, and survives despite being a regular human, actually seeming to handle it better then the two supersoldiers with Jenova cells, since she doesn't experience any of the Mako poisoning and what have yoo afterwards. Once again, these unexplained and wildly inconsistent world element are all major plot points.


Another tertiary batch of inexplicable elements in disk 3, Shinra suddenly goes to get huge super-materia from abandoned reactors. The Mako-hungry super-experimental corp has previously apparently just left these immmensely powerful Mako items lying around without a care., despite knowing exactly where they are sitting.



Cloud's backstory and survival are of course, critical, he's the main character of the game. So having the gap where they just decide "Well we killed one dude, lets just ignore the other one of these experiments who may be our last/best chance at making a new Sephiroth lie in the dirt here". They know there's two escapees, you find the logs about it. (The remake actually shifts this up, because Zack hides him before the battle. Its got about two dozen other issues with Cloud's backstory and how they handle it, but that one was actually addressed)

I'm not going to spend ages defending a game that isn't even my favourite in the series. But I think it suffices to say you can find plot holes in millions of huge worlds and rpgs and it never affects the way a story is told and how much the underlying themes resonate with people. Why was it so popular worldwide and resonate with so many people then if the story made no sense? What I would consider not huge 'plot holes' and a 'well-told story' are two different things. You can pick holes in individual plot points in millions of stories - it generally doesn't affect how well-told they are and the themes and general direction put across. It's more if you have no idea of what's going on in the story or if you can't follow the plot that I would say that's not a well-told story. Or if it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but I really don't think it's guilty of that because millions of people got what was going on enough to connect with it. More than in other game up until that point probably.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Rocketeer hasn't had much to comment on. Over my years of knowing him over on Shamus' blog and forums, he'd be interested in plot analysis, not so interested in programming, and Shamus has been kind of leaning towards the latter during lockdown. He'll probably start showing up again when Shamus does a game series.

Well then the Escapist should go out and hire him. I'd read a column by The Rocketeer.