I listened to/watched Witness this evening. It's a movie with Harrison Ford, a very talented actress named Kelly McGillis, and several other people. Witness protection in the Amish country. I love it. ^_^ A few fun facts about it:

1. It's Viggo Mortensen's film debut, though I didn't watch the part he was in.
2. Alexander Godunov, the strapping young Amish man that gets ice cream wiped on his face, was a ballet dancer who became an actor after he defected from the USSR.
3. When Scott walked in and saw the movie, the first thing he said was, "Hey, it's Harrison Ford." Then he asked if it was Indiana Jones. Then he asked if it was Star Wars. The third one was a joke. I overreacted to the second one, but only because I've seen the Indiana Jones movies up, down, left, and right. That's not Indiana Jones.

Now, because I don't feel like sleeping yet thanks to a dose of liberally chocolate hot cocoa, I'm going to highlight another video game. Or two.

Legend of Legaia (Playstation RPG, 1999)

So, I ran across this one first at Josh's house. He lives on the street next to ours, and there were times that I'd go over there fairly often to play football with the neighborhood kids, hang out, and do what middle schoolers typically do. Sometimes we'd go up to the pantry or stuff like that, or play video games.

It must've been near the end of 7th grade. His dad liked video games. Sometimes he would have Josh read from a strategy guide while he played. I came over when this was going on. It looked pretty for the time. Three different characters were fighting monsters. They were fairly well rendered. The input for commands was fairly sophisticated, with you entering up, down, left, or right to represent different punches or kicks. You'd string a number of these together, and some of the combinations would perform special moves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzpYJ-I4VnU (An example of battle.)

So I was intrigued, but I didn't know the name of the game.

Cut to a couple of months later. Mom had taken us to Hickory Hollow. I can't remember the exact occasion. Perhaps it involved Katie and prom. Perhaps Mom just wanted to shop. The advantage of going to a mall like this is that it had a wide array of stores, including two video game stores. I'd gotten a Playstation last Christmas, so I was eager to spend my limited money on some game.

So I started looking through the used games. Okay, okay... nothing good yet. Then I saw it. Legend of Legaia. It looked familiar. It was for less than $20, so I considered it a bargain. It looked RPG-ish, so I bought it.

I'd played RPGs before. There were a couple for the C64, but those were very difficult. Most of my exposure came from Jarrod, my best friend, who always seemed to have the hottest RPGs for the SNES. Earthbound, Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Zelda... I wouldn't have traded my Sonic games for those, but it would've been close. This was the first RPG I would play and beat on my own.

So, the story. It wasn't until talking with some other enthusiasts several years later, including someone I respect who also played this as their first RPG, that I realized how good the story was. It's gripping without being very cliched, and it just works.

Several years ago, in an era of otherwise unparalleled prosperity, this mist started spreading across the land. Its origins were mysterious, and it brought with it madness. The Seru, a group of creatures that were otherwise tame and took care of human life, were frenzied, and often attached to human hosts, corrupting them into a blank and bleak existence. Pockets of humanity survived, either by being above the mist, being near the ocean where the mist could be kept at bay, or by going underground.

Vahn is a young man that lives in Rim Elm, a village near the ocean. Two things seem to keep the Mist at bay. First, there is a network of walls and windmills. Second, there is a tree in the middle of the village, a Genesis tree. It lies dormant currently, but village legend holds that it is very important.

Rim Elm ends up getting attacked; the wall is broken down, and the Seru attack. In desperation, the people of the village crowd near the tree, which seems to protect them. Vahn goes there himself, and finds that the tree talks to him. There is a Ra-Seru inside... a sentient Seru that can resist the influence of the mist. It activates the tree, which then gets rid of the mist in a certain radius of the village. They are saved.

Vahn and the Ra-Seru bond. Then they go out, trying to find the other trees and discover where the mist comes from. Along the way they will run into Noa, a girl living alone in the northern caves who is aided along by a Ra-Seru bonded to a wolf, and Gala, a monk in a monastery that finds a Ra-Seru while guiding the others through a forest to find a Genesis tree. When he comes back, he finds his monastery ransacked by a man consumed by the power of an evil Seru. After that they journey together.

From here, the game is a long one. It spans three continents. It's an emotional ride, as the characters learn about how they are interconnected with the Seru, which are interconnected with nature, and the great disruption that occured, how the mist was formed, and how people struggled to survive despite it.

During the course of the game, characters can defeat Seru and use them for magic. This makes all of the characters effective spellcasters, an unusual but good move where games normally play down spellcasting outside of boss fights. The battle system otherwise was as the video shows.

Outside of battle, the graphics were about par for the time. Blocky polygons. Interesting scenery and layouts, decent texturing, but by today's standards they don't stand up. Not a game you'd play for eye candy today... though there are but a few games from 8, 9, 10 years ago that fit that classification.

And... I don't know. For my first full-length RPG without anyone's interference, it was... quite a good introduction. I got the feeling I was exploring a world. The characters were solid. Battles were challenging without being impossible. The graphics for the time were pretty. You would meet people, and you'd care for them. If it weren't for that game, I might not have played many others that I like. Like...

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (Playstation, 1999)

Oh, I'd been seeing previews and reviews for that game for a year or two in the game magazines I would occasionally pore over at the store. I had no clue what it was, but it had anime cutscenes, and that intrigued me. It got released, but it was too expensive for me. Then I saw an advertisement near Christmas of 1999. It was never going to be produced again. Soon, it would be the sort of thing you could only get on Ebay, the advertisement claimed (what was Ebay?).

So I wrote it on my Christmas list. Then I forgot what I had put on my Christmas list. The game had left my mind, but Santa pulled through. That Christmas, I opened up the package, and was shocked by the insight Santa had had.

It was a large box, the size of four Playstation game cases stacked on one another. Two of those were for the two game discs, the "Making of..." disc, and a soundtrack. The third one was for the 100+ page color hardback instruction booklet. The last was for the goodies they included with the game, including a cloth map and other fun things. It was complete. And it completed me.

It's not a long game. If you know what you're doing, it'll take as little as 15 hours. 10 or less if you rush. I didn't rush.

You are Alex. You want to be a Dragonmaster just like Dyne, your hero who has a monument in the village. You live on the Silver Star, with the Blue Star looming overhead. The Dragonmaster is the protector of Althena, the goddess who lives atop her temple overseeing the inhabitants of the Silver Star. But for now, you live in a village with your friend since babyhood Luna, an accomplished singer. Then there's Ramus, the enterprising chubby other friend, and Nall, the flying cat-like creature.

Alex and Ramus hatch a plan to get a Dragon Diamond from the nearby White Dragon Cave. Luna comes along with Nall to make sure that they don't get in any trouble. Along the way, Alex passes the White Dragon Trial, one of the four needed to become a Dragonmaster. Going back to the village, they hatch a plan to head off of their island for Meribia, a port city where they can sell the diamond and where Alex can start his journey.

Along the way, you will meet Jessica, a tomboy who often skips out on her priestess training to spend time exploring and traipsing across the countryside, to the dismay of the governor of Meribia. There is Nash, an enterprising overtalkative student in Vane, the floating magic school. Mia, the daughter of the Premier of Vane (Lemia), is shy and knows something is wrong, but doesn't know how to stand up for herself. Ghaleon oversees the school, searching for members of the Vile Tribe who seek to attack Althena. Kyle is a thief in Nanza, a rogue who has his way with the ladies and doesn't mind dressing in drag to get the job done. And there is Laike, a kindly adventurer that shows up sometime with a lot more wisdom than meets the eye. Lively characters, and that's just a small handful. Minor characters' dialogue is often entertaining; I spent (and spend) lots of time just talking to different ones to hear what they say. Page-turner, indeed.

My first playthrough, I had to start over because I got to a certain point without any healing items and didn't realize I could double back. About 5 hours in. But I liked the game so much I could put up with that. There was another point when I'd gotten about halfway through the game, maybe a bit more, and I lost the save to the game. But after a little bit of setting it aside and pretending I hadn't, I had to play through again. I beat it.

And if Legend of Legaia were the game that got me interested in RPGs for sure, this was the one that became my RPG ideal for years. I joined a web community of fans of the game series, one I'm still a part of today. And though we'll all make fun of the different cliches that it falls into (hero saving the world, the hero being 16 with the old timers being above, what, 23?, Kyle getting drunk off of innocuous substances, etc.), it deeply affected us in ways that have big spoilers stamped all over them. It's a story of saving the world, of saving a goddess... a story of love, and again of interesting people along the way.

It's not overly angsty. Angels aren't gratuitously thrown in. I like those stories. If I could get away with it, I would make a career out of analyzing these kinds of games. But that'd be the equivalent of writing on a poem that no one could get a hold of.